


Twisted Wonderland - Part 3

by Editor1



Series: Twisted Wonderland [4]
Category: Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (Movies - Burton), American McGee's Alice, Original Work
Genre: Civil War, Economics, F/M, Femdom, Inspired by Alice in Wonderland, Nobility, Politics, Rape is Legal, Rebellion, Sex further down the line, Wonderland After Alice Dies, magic shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-04 22:46:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17907110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Editor1/pseuds/Editor1
Summary: HELLO. SO THIS STORY IS CURRENTLY ON HIATUS. I HAVE NOT PROPERLY FLESHED OUT THESE CHARACTERS. HOWEVER. WE WILL BE HAVING ANOTHER ONE SHORTLY TO HELP WITH THIS ISSUE. MORE SEX. MORE CRAZY WORLD. KEEP A LOOK OUT.A world where Alice left Wonderland forever and it degraded into insanity.Rettah struggles with a world that left him behind. With nothing but a thirst for knowledge and strangers, he's left to learn about his other self, and whether Asentual's death was a heroic act, or tragedy. All around him are remnants of a past that isn't his. People that remember him as someone else. Only an Alice can see him for what he is.Porn will be later on but this story focuses more on politics and philosophy than the previous two. Check Twisted Wonderland - Backstage for gratuitous smut in the same universe.





	1. Chapter 1

Maybe it was wrong of me to continue living, knowing that there was someone else who wanted it more. 

It’s like waking up after a dream. Your hands slowly come into focus in your mind. Then your feet, and the rest of yourself starts to wake up. Before you know it, your eyes are flickering. But something feels off. Your chest is pounding with an unreadable pain, and your head is fighting against you and begging to take control again. Everything is a haze of confused questions with no answers, with smells you never remembered. And you’re pretty certain you weren’t in the middle of a field when you last fell asleep. 

All the same, I heard the sound of wind against tall fronds of grass, and the creaking of old wood that had withstood that breeze for many years. The sunlight beating down on my face turned the black into a bright orange, until it became painful to keep my eyes closed any longer. Maybe that was what had my head hurting so intensely. It must have hated the sun. 

There was a groan. Maybe from me. It was still hard to tell what sounds were coming from where. I knew I must have moved, because my stomach turned upside down and I was trying to ignore the growing need to throw up everything I might have had in my stomach. There was that pain again, a bright sharp hissing at my chest that I tried to rub away. My hands felt big, strangely so. They covered all of the wound, but then I paused as I realized there was no wound to cover. Whatever clothes I was wearing were torn right through, but my chest was left barren. I rubbed it a little longer to try to massage the pain away. Perhaps I’d gotten a cramp from lying here too long.

Here… Where here was, was another question.

“What the hell are you?” A female voice. I finally opened up one eye, then the other. There was a face in front of me, that I knew. However, there was also a blade of dark red against my neck, held by the girl with the confusing face. I stared at her with tired eyes as I tried to see if I could recognize her. Not Margret, definitely not. Still older than me by a few years. Looking very, very angry. She had… Blue eyes? Red eyes? It was hard to tell when she looked like a blob of color and distorted lines.

I tried to brush the hair out of my face to get a closer look, but that was the wrong decision. She twitched the blade closer, and I dropped my hand with a whimper. The sound of my own voice made the rest of it come out in a waterfall.

“I’m s-sorry if I did anything wrong – I’m Rettah.” I gulped. “I promise, I don’t want to hurt you, please don’t hurt me-” I clenched up when she growled. That hurt too, clenching up. I also didn’t want to die, though. And she sounded like she sincerely wanted that. 

“What are you talking about?” She growled. “You just said your name was Asentual. You were threatening me.” Asentual. There was something… No. A lack of something. Nothing. It sounded so strange, like a name you’d hear in a storybook. It was a blank mess in my head. Maybe I’d be able to find it again, but it just seemed to make everything hurt more, the more I looked for it. Maybe she would know. 

“Asentual?” I blinked at her. “Who’s Asentual?”

“The… The man you just were.” Her voice faltered. She turned her sword up and away from me, and I let out a sigh of relief. I closed my eyes for a moment and when I opened them again, those swords were gone. The blob had vanished them into nothing more than little cylinders, which she held at her sides. I rubbed my eyes again to get more focus into them, and when I blinked, they were sword handles. The swords might have been gone, but the hilts remained, held in trembling fingers. 

She was shaking. I must have scared her. That was strange, she seemed like the terrifying one. “You don’t remember? Anything at all?”

“What?” I stared at her for a long moment, then wiggled my toes. I glanced down at myself when I realized they were farther away than I anticipated. 

There was something very, very wrong. My chest was larger. My hands were big, my legs were at least twice the length they had been and my face… I grabbed at my face. Big. Blocky. Not even a little soft. I looked at my hands in clear detail as I realized just how large they were. And calloused. Tremendously calloused, and long, and large, and attached to wrists that were most certainly not mine. And arms that couldn’t have been that muscled, and a stomach attached to the chest that was big and… There was hair down there. I felt hair. And something much, much bigger than it should have been. But the hands. The hands were the worst part. No child had hands like this. 

“I’m not… Twelve, am I?” This had to be a dream. I looked up at her desperately. I hit my head really hard. That had to be it. There was a perfectly good reason I looked like this. I was looking in a mirror meant to distort my appearance, and suddenly I was cursed to look like it. This was just a nightmare, and in a moment I would wake up at the Queen’s palace and be told by Margret that it was just a terrible dream. 

“No? Should you be?” Oh dear. Oh no. 

“I… thought I should.” I was Twelve. I had to be twelve. Anything else wouldn’t make any sense at all. I was twelve, and I was at the Queen’s Palace and they were serving strawberry shortcake today with tea and I was going to pilfer mashed potatoes from the kitchens and- 

Pain, again. My chest heaved with it. I gripped at the spot that twisted into my flesh like a hot knife. I almost wished there was something there to justify just how much it hurt. But it was only a tear in my clothes to show there was anything amiss. And it hurt, desperately. The stranger must have thought I was insane. Perhaps I was, as none of this made any sense at all. She wasn’t the Queen, this wasn’t the Palace, and wherever this was had a chill to it that my headache didn’t like either. “I don’t know what happened,” I began with gritted teeth, “but I’m sorry if I scared you. Everything is really confusing, and I don’t know how I got here.” Understatement of the century. My head was swimming and telling me multiple different things at once, but the end result was I shouldn’t be here, and neither should she. Or maybe she should, and I was being silly.

“Sorry, it’s… It’s alright.” I jumped when I saw her move, but she didn’t magic the swords back into reality, so that was something to be thankful for. Instead, she crouched down, and she looked at me for a moment. Purple eyes. That was it. Not blue, and definitely not red. But a deep, dark purple, soulfully staring at me the same way I must have been staring at her. 

Now I REALLY felt like heaving, but doing that on her might not have been the best idea. “I think that pain’s my fault.” She finally said. “When… Asentual threatened me, I stabbed him there. But there’s no blood. I’m not sure what to think of it, but what happened to you, it seems weirdly familiar. You had yellow eyes when I met you, and you called yourself Asentual. Are you sure that’s not ringing any kind of bell?”

Asentual. Yellow eyes. Some kind of creature that made her attack. Perhaps I was possessed. Perhaps this was still a dream. It only served to make my mind spin in circles the more I tried to think about it. The more I looked for a thing named Asentual, the more my lack of wound and headache seemed to fight back against it. I wasn’t a monster, right? I wasn’t whatever made her afraid of me. I’d never had anyone afraid of me before. It frightened me to think about. 

“That sounds extremely weird.” I winced against the pain, gritting my teeth. “I’ve never even heard the name before, and I- I don’t have yellow eyes, right? I’ve got green?” 

“Now you do.” She chuckled faintly. “That’s what you’re worried about?” Green eyes. Good, I’m not a monster then. That was a relief. I may not have been this Asentual anymore, but the way she said frightened even me. 

“I like my eyes. They remind me of my sister. My sister…” My eyes widened. If this was real, if I was real and she was real, then the rest of the world had to be real too. Perhaps I’d fallen asleep too long. Perhaps I’d woken up from a deep coma and ended up… Somewhere. But that meant Margy was still there, back at the castle. Still miserable and still waiting for me. I’d have to go to her. She always knew the answers to everything. “I hope she’s alright.” I looked at the girl again, who looked at me as though I might fall down at any moment. To be honest, I felt it. The echoes of the pain in my chest fought ceaselessly to outdo my head. All in all, I felt like I’d fallen out of a tree.

“And who are you? You know my name, but I don’t know yours.” I blinked at her curiously, trying to take in her face clearly now that I could see properly. Purple eyes, dark. Black hair down to her waist in shaggy tendrils. Her clothes were a mess, so I carefully focused on her face instead of anything she’d rather no show. I hope she didn’t notice it, but I’d glanced enough to see she had pants, of all things. At least the remnants. 

I caught her smiling, and quickly looked away. My cheeks warmed. I hoped that was just the sun. 

“My name is Shift.” I looked back carefully. Maybe she could tell me something more. I couldn’t seem to get my brain working, and she knew something about an Asentual, so she obviously knew more than me. Maybe she could make things work again. 

“Who is Shift?”

“What?” She blinked.

“I mean, who is she?” I smiled sheepishly. “It’s just a name? Or is there more?”

She didn’t seem to get it at first. I was worried maybe I’d been too confusing. She looked at me for a moment, thoughtful, then a slight pink overtook her complexion. That made me pause. I hadn’t meant it like that. She was blushing, and there was something strange going on with my chest. I couldn’t seem to look her in the eye as I waited for an answer. They kept getting drawn to my massive hands. 

“Well, I suppose…” She spoke finally, breathing in deeply. “A traveler. I think this might be the newest place I’ve been, but it was a difficult ride here.” Well, that didn’t help much. She sounded pained, but I couldn’t exactly avoid asking questions. She seemed nice enough and I didn’t want to hurt her, but I needed to know at least some things.

“You never stay?”

“No, not really. I feel… All over the place, really. I don’t really like to stay long. Because everything is just… Kind of…” Confusing? Like you’re wondering how you even ended up here to begin with? Where was here? Was up, down? Where was Margret? How far until you think we could find some food? What kind of noble are you anyways, I’ve never seen anything like you before in my life. She probably wouldn’t know how to answer any of those either. 

“It’s okay. I feel all over the place right now too.” But at least the world had stopped spinning, and she was a black mess of scruffy hair instead of a black blob with purple in the middle.

“I suppose you would.” She sat down beside me. “I’ve got the same problem as you, I think.”

“I’m not sure I even have a problem, if I can’t remember it.” A problem, no I definitely had one of those. It was a problem if you couldn’t remember aging six or seven years. I’d gone through puberty and completely missed it all. I was almost completely certain that wasn’t how puberty worked. Not that I’d ever asked, but I was reasonably sure. Not to mention everything hurting. At least that was dying down. My chest had gone from imminent death and destruction, to merely a heart attack. And there was a strange girl beside me that had just had a sword trained on me and she was blushing and I was blushing and I feel like there should have been less blushing involved. 

“Isn’t that the worst kind of problem?”

I had to laugh with this girl. She wasn’t wrong. I couldn’t even remember the last day I was awake. I don’t think I’d ever heard of a worst problem. “Okay, maybe. But I also don’t know which way is up or down, almost. Speaking of which… do you know where we are?”

She paused. “… No, I really don’t. I just got here.” No, she wouldn’t know would she. This stranger I’d just met was a stranger to everything else. And everything else was…

“Well…” I looked up at the shed, then narrowed my eyes against the sun as I tried to pick apart our surroundings. A field, stretching far and wide until the very edges of a forest that looked lime green. Something at the back of my mind told me I’d been here before. Something… Old. A home. This was my home. “I know this place!” I exclaimed. “Okay, not completely turned around. This is my old house. Right, we can at least get our bearings, then.” A far away from anything I could remember, but not so far that my mind was utterly useless. I turned back with a smile “Well, Shift the traveler. It seems you have a bit of a problem with clothing. At least I can help you with this. I’m pretty certain there’s some old clothes around here that should fit you. I mean, you’re definitely as tall as I remember my sister.” How much taller would she be now? Was she alright? She must have been the Left Hand by now with all of that studying. So much of her life had gone into tutoring, and I was only at the beginning of mine. 

“Is that meant to be a compliment?” Oh. I didn’t know how to read her. She stared at me so strangely. I couldn’t understand that look.

“Oh, sorry… Just an observation. You’re not that short…” I probably offended her, maybe. That was it. “But do you want to come inside? It’s probably in a terrible state of disarray, but maybe there’s something we can use.” How long had it been since I’ve been here? How far into disrepair had it become? 

She glanced down at her attire. “These do look completely awful. Perhaps it’s time for a change. Seems I had… Problems in the last place. You’re not the only one with memory problems here, sadly.” Well, at least I wasn’t alone. She at least was the right age, though. Trying to stand up with legs so long you felt like a horse was nigh impossible. 

“Was the last place rough?” I asked conversationally as I struggled how to learn to use stilts with minimal prior knowledge. 

“A little. It’s hard to explain, and I’m only catching pieces. Do you… Happen to know the name of the country we’re in, or the place, or anything like that?” Oh! Something I knew. 

“You mean you’re not from Wonderland?”

“Wonderland? Like… The story?” She blinked. “The one by that English author?”

“The story?” 

“… Gotcha,” she said. “So maybe we should talk about this after I get changed. It’s a long story. Very, very long. And honestly, I’m not sure you’re going to believe half of it.” I wasn’t sure I believed what was currently happening now. 

“You’re really strange, Shift the traveler. But you’d be surprised what I’d believe. I did think I was twelve a few minutes ago.” I grinned sheepishly. Joking about it made it feel a little less painful and a little less terrifying, but not by much. The more I realized how much I must have missed, the more I wondered about what else could have happened in that time frame. 

I felt numb, talking. This didn’t feel like me. These weren’t my words. When I looked down at my hands, those weren’t mine. I was starting to wonder if I ever should have woken up.

“Am I strange to you? I’ve been trying to hide it.” She was strange, alright. But I didn’t really have time to question her. 

“Absolutely,” I heard myself say. “Let’s go get you something that isn’t rags.” Inside the house. Out of the hot sun and the strange world, and inside the house I’d feel better, and less entirely confused. 

One step into the house, and I felt like I’d made a bit of a mistake. The single room that had once been the cottage I remembered was falling to pieces in itself. Someone had come in and fixed up what they could, but it was truly now no better than a shed. A single mattress darkened with mildew, an ornate wardrobe ripped apart from somewhere else, and a few shelves holding what could have been books, if the water hadn’t gotten to them before. Wood littered the floor from the remnants of the poor construction job, which I carefully skittered over as I made my way to hopefully, where I could find clothes. 

This wasn’t the place I remembered. It hurt a little, to know that. But it was a place that could help me, and this stranger behind me that maybe I shouldn’t have been turning my back to. 

“So what do you think?” I turned quickly back around with the hair on my neck standing up, but she only seemed to be staring in the entrance-way silently. I was safe, she wasn’t secretly trying to kill me. 

“It’s… uh…” 

“It’s not what I thought it was going to be, no.” I sighed. “Sorry, I didn’t realize how bad it would be.” I glanced back at the wardrobe, then gripped the handle tightly as I began to pull. It was stuck, perhaps from the waterlogged wood expanding, but with a few more hefts, I got it open. Surprisingly, it didn’t smell as terrible as I thought it would inside. It had exactly what I had imagined as well. A couple white blouses in reasonable condition, a few pairs of pants, a skirt, a dress, and an old battered hat. “Ah ha!” I beamed. “Okay, it’s not all for nought. I’ve got these dresses, one should fit you.” 

“A dress?” 

“Of course.” I held it up with a smile that must have looked realer than it felt. It had a few old and tattered red hearts embroidered around the chest. She looked like a human, those eyes certainly weren’t. It would be best to dress her like a noble, then, if she was a traveler. 

“Can I not wear a dress?”

“Why not?” I bit my lip. “You said you’re a traveler, so you might not know, exactly but… There’s class division here. Things you might have taken for granted before, might not work exactly right here. Are you a human?” 

She stared at me for a good long while, then slowly nodded. I winced. 

“That’s going to be a problem.”

“Wait, you’re not?” I blinked, then set down the dress on the bed. 

“Oh no, I’m a Wonderlander. You must be from pretty far, if you don’t know those.”

“Assume I know literally nothing.” 

“Oh…” That wasn’t very helpful, considering I knew very little to begin with. “Put together, we won’t be much help then, you know.” I was little help as it was, barely able to control what I was saying. 

“I realize that, but we’ll have to work with what we’ve got.” 

“Right. Well. I’m a Wonderlander, specifically a Queen noble.” I poked at the rats nest of hair on my head. At least that hadn’t changed, though it had gotten a little longer. “Red hair means that I’m a descendant of the Queen.” 

“The…. Queen of Hearts,” she supplied. 

“Yes! Exactly! And you said you didn’t know anything.” 

“Well… I might know a little bit, but this is more of a mix-up than anything I’ve veer seen before, so you might find me getting… Quite a few facts wrong.”

“That’s alright!” I smiled. Why was I smiling? Why was I happy? Why did I feel the need to act like everything was fine? Where had the last several years of my life gone? Where was Margret? “I’m just glad I’m not completely left alone to think for the both of us.” As much as I smiled, everything was still so hazy and different to pick through, there was a nervousness prickling at the back of my spine as to what could have happened. She’d mentioned a man. I was afraid to ask. The kind of implications she gave were… If he was the one that had lived my life, then what kind of life had I lived? “And I’m also the descendant of the hatter,” I continued. “I even have the hat…” I trailed off, touching my head again. The sparse head, with nothing on it but a mess of red straw. “Oh dear.”

“What’s wrong?” 

“My hat must be outside where I fell.” I carefully moved past her as I quickly threaded my way out the door. “One moment, I’ll be back!” 

“Alright, I’ll just be… trying on clothes, I suppose.” 

I sprinted out of the house as quickly as I could, whirling around for a sign of that hat. If there was one thing that could keep me calm with a mind that fought against me, it was that thing. Proof of something real, something I cold hold onto that hadn’t left me.

Hiding in the edges of the fronds of grass. I breathed out a sigh of relief at the sight, and bent down to pick it up. It wasn’t too worse for wear, still the same it had always been. Still a crook in the side, still black with the sash of red, and still holding the strange card I didn’t want to get rid of for fear or breaking a family heirloom. 

I held it up to the light, and smiled. Something still constant in a sea of confusion. It was better than nothing. 

I pushed it back onto my head, and walked back inside. 

To the middle of the strange girl changing clothes. 

“Oh dear- I’m sorry, I-“ I turned back around with my eyes tightly shut, but that hadn’t stopped me from accidentally getting a look. She was warmly skinned under those clothes, tanned from the sun, with ripples of muscle and – I should have probably stopped thinking about it. Not polite, not even around a stranger. Especially a strange stranger. 

“Are you alright?” I heard her call. I flushed darker and wormed my way further down the span of the shed, getting as far away from the doorway as I could. The only thing I had for company were the fronds of plants waving in the breeze. 

“I’m… Alright… I just intruded on you and I’d like to apologize.” 

“Apologize? It’s not like you’ve never… Oh. You said you were twelve.”

“I am twelve!” No, I wasn’t. But I was. But… It hurt to think about. 

“Right,” she chuckled. I flushed darker.

“You don’t have to be mean about it.” 

“I’m sorry. It’s just strange to me. You being twelve, but at the same time…” She didn’t understand half of the war going on inside my head. 

“Well, you’re strange to me! What are you, even?” I bit my lip. “I’ve been trying to brush it off, but… I really don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know anything about you, or this weird Asentual thing, or how I got here, or what’s happened to me in the past however many years. All of it seems centered on you, as far as I can tell. I wake up, and suddenly you’re there. And I have no clue what you are, Shift the traveler. A traveler, I-I don’t even know what kind of travelling you do!” 

She poked her head out from the door. “You sound like you’re in a crisis.” 

I whimpered. “Well, maybe I am!” A crisis of the world spinning and tilting off its axis, and me barely holding onto something stable. 

“I suppose this is better than the strangely happy way you were before.” She was right. I wasn’t smiling.

“I just… I didn’t know how to react.” I faltered. “I’ve been smiling, but in truth, I’m confused. About everything. About what happened, who I am, why I’m here, and where the rest of my life went. I guess I wanted to be happy, but at the same time, it feels too surreal. The only thing keeping me from completely losing it is this hat, if I’m to be quite honest.” 

“The hat?” She glanced up to it. “… The hat that looks like it should have been thrown out years ago?” 

“It’s not a silly hat!” I scoffed. “My father gave it to me.” 

“I apologize. If it makes you feel better, I find this equally surreal. Out of everywhere I expected to go, I didn’t think I’d end up in a place like this.” She nodded her head, and fully left the house. 

Her choice in clothing was strange. She’d picked the blouse, and a pair of trousers she kept tied with a belt around her middle. The same belt held those strange sword hilts from before. They looked like canisters more than handles, really.

“I know this is confusing to you, not knowing anything,” she said carefully. “I don’t know much either. But I am not sure just how much you’d believe if I told you. But I… get what you’re saying, about the lack of memories. I think that this Asentual, the one I killed, was a… Version of you, of some kind.” 

“Like a part of me?” Some evil part of me that cut out the rest of me, that forced me to forget. What a strange thought. He must have lived my life. 

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe something different. I’m not sure, I’m not exactly an expert on… Anything in this world, to be honest. I’m probably the least likely to be able to give you a good answer. But that man I killed, it’s clearly obvious he wasn’t you. I’m not sure there’s a way to make him less like you. You’re very...”

“Rettah,” I supplied. 

“Sure. Rettah. And he’s very… Asentual.” 

“Asentual,” I repeated. Not me, the opposite of me. “Evil. Wrong… Bad.” I supplied.

“Yes. He wanted to tie me up, trussed up like some kind of animal and send me somewhere.” I shivered. A slaver. The other me had been a slaver. Not even regular Wonderlanders interacted with them, unless they had to. It took a certain kind of person to steal humans away and break them until they obeyed. 

“Alright, so I’m not that man, and I’m not a boy, and I’m not right in the head. I’m some kind of weird thing that happened because something took me over. And you killed that thing, and now I’m here.” 

“I… Suppose?” 

“Alright, so that settles me, then. What are you?” 

She groaned. “Do we really have to do this?”

“It could help fix my mind up,” I sighed. “Can’t you help me at least a little?” 

“I don’t think learning about something infinitely more confusing than,” she gestured around me. “THIS, could help you in any way.” 

“But…” I bit my lip. “Alright. Fine. I won’t pry. But you’re not making me trust you any more than before.” 

“You turned your back on me before. I’d say you trust pretty easily.” I winced.

“That was only for a second! And you had swords trained on me, don’t think I’d forget that!” 

“No, I wouldn’t dream of it.” She rolled her eyes. “I-“ 

The world shook. Once. Then again, coming closer and closer until it seemed like my chest was shaking every few seconds. The color drained from my face at the noise. Something I’d heard of in stories, but never seen up close. Something the servants would warn me about before I went to sleep. Something very real, and very, very close. 

“What was-“ The girl began, but I grabbed her by the hand, pulling her back into the shed. Before the door clicked shut, a voice boomed from the other side. 

“Is that you, Hatter?” 

I whimpered, half out of the door as I gripped the handle. Shift’s eyes widened as she looked behind us at the half open door. 

“What is that thing?” She whispered. 

“I…” I was having trouble finding my voice. “Um…”

“What are you doing, hiding out all the way out here? I didn’t know you’d gone the opposite direction.” The voice boomed again, like a crack of thunder. It made my heart leap into my throat. 

“Say something!” The girl urged. “He’s just standing there.” 

“I d-don’t want to turn around,” I whimpered. 

“Do it!” With a sharp heave, she shoved me out the door. I stumbled out of the door on the heap of logs by the front, catching myself at the last moment, and stared directly at the source of the noise. 

An ogre. At least eight feet tall. With a bowler hat, broken vest, and pants larger than any I’d ever seen before.

The creature grinned, the dull grey skin on his face peeling back to reveal more teeth other than the menacing white tusks that shone at all times. The others were yellow in his mouth. 

“There you are. Surprised you didn’t come calling after me. Don’t you recognize your old friend Jeck?”


	2. Chapter 2

Act natural. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t be myself. I had to be someone else, because he knew me that way. A complete stranger. The girl behind me was holding her breath and I forced myself not to do the same. There was a creature in front of us that I had only ever dreamed about, and it was only a few steps away from killing the both of us. I had to be something else. 

The massive entity chuckled at my reluctance. I bit my tongue when I realized I’d been frozen the whole time. I couldn’t be. I couldn’t be Rettah.  
“You alright there, Sensi?”

“… Yes.” I said quietly. Not too slowly. “I’m fine.” My voice didn’t crack. I was thankful for that. It helped that somewhere along the line, Shift had grabbed my hand and was holding it so tight that it hurt. My heart beat out of my chest and cymbals crashed in my head, but at least I had a stranger holding onto me and telling me it was going to be alright. That was better than nothing. 

“Well come ‘ere then, and let me take a look at ya. What’s it been, three years? Four? You’re a fine man now. A proper slaver. Though you’re still lacking the hairs on your chin.” A slaver. Proper slaver. I was a slaver, my name was Asentual, and I was here to do my work. I was about to trap a girl. And now I had. That was my mission and I had accomplished it. And I was… A proper lad. A fine man. A… Swashbuckler? A bravado? 

“I’m in the middle of something, actually.” I tilted my head to the side, in the direction of Shift. “I’ve caught this young thing out here in the middle of nowhere.” Her eyes widened as I spoke. From under the visor of the top hat, I eyed her earnestly. A whimper nearly made it out of my mouth. I hoped she got the message. 

Play along. 

“Lemme take a look at her, will ya Sensi? You have a good nose for it. Talent, I hear.” I wrenched Shift away from the door and threw her down before me on the ground. Those sword hilts at her sides fell with her. I gulped. If she didn’t realize, if she didn’t know, we’d be dead. She’d kill me, and then Jeck would kill her. But if I played this right, none of us would get hurt. The ogre would leave me alone, and we could run. Get far away from the monster and I could put any thought that my other would ever associate themselves with something so brutal out of my mind. He was a monster if he thought he could make friends with something like. 

“She’s got nice eyes, but she’s still human,” I forced myself to drawl. That was right, right? That was the way he would talk. It must have been. “I was thinking of selling her at the Capital.”

“She’s a mighty fine piece, that’s for certain.” The ogre moved, the massive weight in his legs shifting. My own knees buckled as I watched, but he simply moved into a kneel as he took a closer look at the poor girl. It was my fault now. I was throwing a stranger in front of a monster, and of course she wouldn’t trust me. She would try to kill Jeck, maybe. Die in the process. And then I’d be dead too. I’d heard so many stories. So many things these creatures were capable of. Ripping children from their homes. Leaving them broken and dying on their doorsteps. Or not at all. Left alive, only to suffer. 

Please, please let her have understood. Please let her have seen my eyes, know it wasn’t a monster, know it was me. Know I would never let her suffer that fate. 

She was silent as she stared into the hollow eyes of the twisted beast. The smell of his breath carried to here. Carrion. I’d heard that too. That was the reason things like that were best left banished to the mountains. The one thing that the Queen wouldn’t stand for, the one thing that left every Wonderland frozen to the core of their being. Murder. 

“She dresses strange. S’ppose it was from looting the house?” 

“She stole from my shack.” I pushed my hands into my pockets and tilted my head down, simulating aloof. I hoped. It would have been silly if it wasn’t so terrifying. His eyes were on me, on my every action. I was being judged. “I thought I might have her pay me back by selling her off.” 

“Your place, eh?” Oh no. I’d said something wrong. Was this my place? Should it have been? I remembered a house here once, but not a shack. I tasted blood in my mouth. I’d bitten into my tongue. “You don’t ride out here much, anymore, do you.” 

“I thought a change of pace would be nice.” He twitched again. Closer to the girl. She was in danger. She felt it as much as I did. Her hackles raised, staring at the creature’s nostrils with her hands twitching back over and over to her belt. She had more than a guard’s instinct for weapons. It made me want to ask even more questions. Her eyes were dull. Staring at him with a darkness in them. A different fear went up my spine. 

“I guess you were lucky to find her, then.” He simply smirked as he took in her form. “Her face is lovely, and her eyes even lovelier. I’d almost not fault you for keeping her to yourself.” He stood up again, and I choked on my own tongue. Even as tall as I was now with this sudden spurt of growth, Jeck was still far taller than I could ever hope to be. Far taller than any normal human. Far more grotesque. “I decided to come down from the mountains to try my luck again, you know. After all of the… racism, you see.” 

“I… see.” I said quietly. I bit my lip, but the next words blurted out without meaning to. “Are you sure it’s such a good idea?” A silence hung in the air for a moment. I’d made the wrong decision. I could feel it. 

Shift dared to turn back to look at me. I looked on in disbelief. Her eyes were cold and darted between Jeck and I constantly. I was trying to keep from screaming and she looked liked it would take only a second for her to twitch her hands and kill him. She didn’t know what she was dealing with.

Then Jeck laughed. A deep, throaty laugh that echoed throughout the field and made all the hairs on my arm stand straight on edge. “I suppose you’re right, Sensi. It ain’t ever easy for my folk, trying to play with you Wonderlanders. A big ol’ thing like me, we’re a bit terrifying to you, aren’t we?” He chuckled again. His chest wobbled with every guffaw. “Come here, will you? Let me get a look at you.”

“I’m no different than the last you’ve seen me,” I heard myself say. I wanted to turn away. I wanted to run. I didn’t know how I could speak. My tongue hurt, being used to talk, but the words somehow came out as though nothing was wrong. The drawl in my mouth felt so normal, it scared me. “Where are you heading?” 

Changing the subject was risky. I could feel the tension in my arms only growing as he puzzled out what I’d said. 

“Well, I’m heading to the Duchess now.” Yes. Please leave. Please go away, and never come back. “I thought I’d pay my dues, let her know I’m back and open for business. It’s a hard life, being a slaver when so many cower in sight of you. Not that I dislike it.” He grinned in a way that could curdle milk. I was even more thankful for this hat then before. The visor hid my eyes bulging and dilated in pure terror. “I do like my women scared. Like this beaute in front of me. A nice, healthy fear on this one. Though, I got a whiff of rebellion in her.” He snorted. “Might want to curb that if you expect to sell her. Unless you intend to keep her- Oh, right, I’ve heard you’ve got yourself someone now. Guess there’s no point.”

“A… Someone?” I dared to ask. I tried to sound as noncommittal as I could, but inside I was wracking my brain for any evidence of that.

The ogre snorted again, and rocked the world with another jolt of boisterous laughter. “No less than the Right Hand of the Duchess to satisfy you, eh? Didn’t realize you were the type. I mighta offered my own assets if I’d known.” He smirked. 

If he had tried to see my face under the hat then, he would have seen a numb frozen stare. 

My other self… Liked… Men. I stared down at my hands. That couldn’t be right. That didn’t make any sense. I… I didn’t. That meant he couldn’t be me. It was simultaneously a relief, and further confusion. He was so different, so far removed from who I was, that there was no way to assume anything about him based off me. There was an intruder living in my own head, a parasite that had been commandeering my life for the past several years. He’d grown up into a monster and everyone had forgotten me. And then…

That meant there was someone out there that knew more about me. Someone out there that knew the answers to what I was looking for and could tell me what was wrong with me. Someone that could help ease this constant ache my head that pounded over and over the more I tried to look for the other side of myself. Someone that was at the Duchess. Where this demon was heading. 

“But that’s neither here nor there now. She’s yours to do with as you like, of course, but I’d happily take her off your hands, if you’d be willing to sell.” 

“I’ll let you continue your trip to the Duchess.” My mouth twitched, trying to smile, but I couldn’t manage more than a grimace. My own body was trying to betray me because it knew as well as I did that we shouldn’t be consorting with something like this. “I’m going to take her to the Capital. I have a feeling that a usual I’ve got will be interested in her exotic features.” 

“A shame,” the ogre grunted. His guttural voice was inhuman. It hurt my ears. “I’ll shove off then.” He turned to go, and I let out a sigh of relief. 

“Oh.” He paused. I wanted to cry. “Where’s that horse of yours?” 

“It’s…” I paused. I actually paused. My mouth didn’t work. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think. “I left it. By the forest. I wanted… To walk.” It hurt. It hurt so much. That didn’t sound true, even to me. I was too shaken too lie, too afraid to pretend to be something else. I’d fallen out of everything, and he could feel it on me. 

His eyes narrowed. “Shame. I wanted to know if you’d changed your mind about selling her. A bit greedy, Hatter.”

“Sorry, she’s still not for sale,” I choked out. Please leave. Turn around. Leave. Please. Don’t come back. 

The ogre eyed me. He breathed heavily for a moment longer as he looked from my form, to Shift. She hadn’t moved the entire time. Her eyes and his locked for a second, and he didn’t seem to like what he saw. His nose wrinkled, but then he turned around. He walked away. Slowly. Agonizingly. Step by step, he disappeared into the tall fronds of grass until he was gone from both of our sights. 

I collapsed to the ground in sobs. 

“It’s okay,” I heard whispered in my ear. I couldn’t hear much else over the sound of the blood roaring in my ears. Choking with gasps and sobs, I reached out for the hand that offered itself to me and took with my eye still full of tears. 

“That…” I whimpered. “That thing…” 

“It reeked of death,” she confirmed. “It was wrong.” 

“I can’t… I can’t believe…”

“You did it,” she coached. She gripped my hand tighter. “You talked your way out. I don’t even know how, but you did. I wouldn’t have been able to... to…” 

“Who are you?” I turned back to her, my eyes still shining with tears. Her eyes were still dark. Still hopelessly confusing. Still just as terrifying as when I’d seen her looking at Jeck like she meant to kill him. She couldn’t have. She was only one person. “Why do you look like that?” 

“Like what?” She blinked, and her grip loosened. I pulled her closer, trying to catch my breath from the sobs. 

“Like you don’t have anything.” 

“I…” Her gaze fell. “I don’t.”

“That’s not what I mean,” I used my free hand to rub my eyes and nose. My chest still heaved. “I don’t understand what’s going on. I want Margret. I want to know who I even am anymore. But you just leave more questions.” 

“Well,” She paused, then pulled me closer. I froze when I realized she was hugging me. 

It was warm. Calming. 

“One thing at a time, right?” She worded awkwardly. “We’ll figure out who you are. We’ll figure out what’s happening, and why both of us ended up here. And when you’re ready, we’ll figure out who I am, too.” 

“Don’t you know who you are?” 

“I… Used to. Once. But…” She let go of me, and showed me her hand. Soft, pliable, with no signs of callouses from work. It was like a child’s. “I’m not what I was. I’m not…” She bit her lip, then looked at me earnestly. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I wasn’t trying to get us both killed. I’m not a monster. I can promise you that.” Her eyes were sad. That was it. Sad, and guarded. Broken so deep, that the purple faded to black.

“I’m sorry,” I whimpered. “I’m just… I’m scared.” 

“I know,” she nodded. “I am too. About the ogre, and about everything else. But we’ll figure this out. I don’t want to be your enemy.”

“And I don’t want to be yours.” 

“Then we’ll work together, at least for now. I have memories, but none of them are useful here. You have almost none, but we’ll need every scrap we can get from you. Do you have anyone that can help us? The nearest town, maybe? Do you have a layout?” 

The Right Hand of the Duchess. A man that knew things. He’d know about me. He’d know everything. Maybe I’d be able to get answers. It almost seemed to be a good idea. But I knew better. 

Jeck was travelling there, and none of that mattered if I could find Margy. 

“Let’s go to the Capital.” It still hurt to say, knowing it meant I was ignoring a lead. 

“You don’t mean to sell me, right?” She smiled, but she only seemed to be half joking. I smiled back reassuringly, but inside that worried me. The pit in my stomach wouldn’t leave. Why couldn’t she seem to trust me? I had a good reason not to trust her for what she seemed not to be able to tell me, but I was just… Me. A kid in the body of someone that had apparently done evil things. I wasn’t him, and she must have known that. She even seemed to understand more than I had. 

“No, of course not. But Margy- Margret is there. My sister. She might be able to help the two of us. It’s a long way, but there’s a couple villages along the way, from what I can recall.” What I could recall was meager in comparison to what anyone else would know. I hadn’t been here since I was… Four? Five? I barely knew anything from experience, and even the Atlases from the Palace library hadn’t helped much outside the Palaces and major city. I sighed. Knowing so little was taxing. “If we stick to the paths, and we’re extremely careful in Wonderland Forest, we should be alright.” 

“Lead the way,” she nodded to me, and I started walking through the tall fronds of grass. As we left the clearing of the house, it seemed to disappear in the sea of yellow and green. I’d be lost without the firm path leading the way, one that had pointed us in the direction of a small sliver of green on the horizon. That bright color was the very edge of the forest. 

“So.” She glanced over at me as we walked along the worn path. “What’s Wonderland Forest?”

I bit my lip. “Very dangerous.” 

She narrowed her eyes. “Just how dangerous are we talking here?” 

“You don’t happen to know what a Jabberwocky is, do you?” She groaned, turning her eyes back to the path. I noticed her hands went immediately to the hilts at her belt.

“Yeah, unfortunately.”

“Really?” 

“I don’t exactly know everything, but I can hazard a guess. Is it like a dragon?” 

“Well, the depictions showed it was something stranger than a dragon, more something within its own right. It had whiskers, and bulbous blind eyes, and it burbles-“

“As it came. Going snicker snack. Yeah. I know what you’re talking about.” I blinked in surprise. 

“Do you have Jabberwockys where you’re from?” 

“No- not exactly,” she sighed. “I don’t think it would do much good explaining why I know about it, but I do. I also know what a Bandersnatch is, if that matters.”

“How?” I exclaimed. “You’re from this strange place you won’t talk about and don’t even know the basics of Wonderland culture but you keep giving me these strange tidbits of information that seem banal in comparison.” 

“Look, you wouldn’t believe it, and you’re already in the middle of a crisis coming to terms with the fact that your person was split into two completely different people. You really think I want to add onto that?” 

“I think you’re using that as an excuse to keep quiet about everything. You looked like you were going to try to kill that ogre.” 

“And maybe I could have.” I balked at her. 

“Excuse me?”

“Maybe. I. could. Have.” She spoke clearly, with glittering eyes. 

She had a way of making me nervous, just with a glance. 

“I don’t think that would have helped anything,” I muttered quietly. She picked it up easily. 

“No, it probably wouldn’t have. So I did nothing. You solved it on your own. You did a good job.” And nearly puked in front of the creature in the process. I wouldn’t call that a good job.

“You’re being kind of condescending…” 

“Sorry, I can’t help it.” She smiled lightly. “You did say you were twelve, after all.” 

“Well… That’s…” I couldn’t exactly argue with her there, so I trailed off into silence watching my shoes instead. They were strange too. A mixture of dress shoes and work boots. They felt nice for walking and travelling. At least the person I had been before knew how to dress properly. As strange as the sleeveless outfit was, it felt nice against the heat of the sun to have my arms free. 

“What is the Capital like?” Shift broke the silence as we neared the maw of the forest. It was silent here. No birds sang, no cicadas chirped a long drone, not even wind seemed to blow along the edge of the wood. It didn’t seem that… Terrible, though. I’d heard so many stories, of this feeling behind the forest. I couldn’t feel the heaviness that was often associated with, not the push to try to keep any intruders out. But when Shift spoke, I glanced back to her and noticed a fear settling in her features. 

“Why are you asking me this now?” I hesitated. 

“I’m trying not to think about this deep dark woods we’re going in,” she admitted. “Tell me why you haven’t cut this down yet?” 

“I… I think it’s protected, in a way. The things in here don’t want their habitat lost. Are you afraid?” 

“No. This isn’t fear.” She looked at the first stand of trees apprehensively. “I’ve had my fair share of fear, and this isn’t it. This is something external. Do you feel it? There’s a heaviness.” 

“No, but I understand what you’re saying. There’s tales of this wood, and what it seems to do to people who enter it. I’m not entirely sure why I’m not… Affected.” 

“You’ve already well established that you’re not normal.” She smiled. “Maybe it’s a side effect of having another personality. Maybe he’s the one that feels something, and you’re different.” 

“I’m not sure,” I sighed. “I’m not sure of anything. We can’t know anything for certain until we talk with someone that knows whoever Asentual is. At least he’s popular and not hated – at least, I’m assuming he’s not going to be killed on sight by anyone. Hopefully.” 

“Hopefully,” she echoed, looking deeper into the forest. We stood there for a moment, both gazing in with only darkness inside. There was a path there, a continuation of the one we had taken from the shack, but that didn’t mean either of us were inclined to want to continue. 

“I suppose… We should go in,” I said tentatively. 

“I suppose.” 

“… Ladies first.” 

“Uh huh?” 

“W-well,” I stammered. “It’s only polite.” 

“Of course, and you’re such a gentleman,” she chuckled to herself, and stepped inside. 

“Well, I try to be.” The world darkened around us the further we went, the bright green of the tree canopy hiding all but the smallest gleam of light. At first it was navigable, but as the hours drew on, the darkness began to seem more and more unnatural. 

I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t afraid. I was always so afraid of the dark, so afraid of the unknown that hid just beneath everywhere I wasn’t currently looking. And yet, as we padded down the silent path that trailed further into the heart of the most dangerous place on Earth, I found myself strangely at home. It was as though eyes watched me everywhere I went, eyes that seemed to be invested in my protection rather than viewing me as an intruder. The utter silence was calming. Though I could hear my heart beating in my chest due to the sheer silence of the wood, it was slow and steady. 

“How can you walk through pitch darkness like this?” I heard Shift ask beside me. It took a careful squint just to see her face. The purple eyes were the only thing glinting any light at all. It was a wonder we could see each other at all. 

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m terrified of the dark. I used to make Margy leave a candle beside me still lit when I went to sleep.” It didn’t make any sense. Maybe I should have stopped looking for sense. 

“You don’t feel those eyes on your back?” She glanced back around. “I don’t like the feeling of this. I hate not being able to fight what I can’t see.” 

“I feel it, but I don’t think it wants to hurt us, whatever it is.” 

“How can you say that? You were hyping this place up to be a death trap. We have no food or water for the entire trip, we could get lost with one wrong foot if we don’t follow the path, and I was certain the sun was shining high in the sky when we left. This doesn’t make any sense, and I don’t like it.” 

“Neither do I, but…” I didn’t know what to say to make her feel better. I couldn’t turn off her paranoia. Maybe I was the broken one, with a fight or flight response completely off kilter. 

When I trailed off, a soft, but slowly growing laugh replaced the silence. 

Both of us looked at each other. It was a man’s voice, and she could clearly see through the gloom that I wasn’t laughing. We could both see the whites of each other’s eyes widening as the noise registered, and for the first time, the hairs on my neck raised. 

“That’s not me-“ 

“I know,” she interrupted. The sharp metallic noise signaled her unsheathing her swords. “That’s too deep to be your voice. Anything in your books talk about evil laughter?”

“I-I don’t know,” I rubbed my head, searching desperately for information that seemed to run away when I needed it most. Bandersnatches were silent and deadly and came with a rush of air, Jabberwockys were loud and uncontrollably violent, Jub Jub birds made strange noises not unlike the call of a dove, and tree lizards- “I don’t- wait- the Cheshire!”

The laughter died down, and a small light ahead of us illuminated a face. There was nothing else, just a singular head watching the two of us who stood frozen in the middle of the path. Its eyes seemed to glow a hypnotic yellow as it watched us, unblinking with a grin that stretched from cat ear to cat ear. His teeth were sharp, and large, grown in a smile far too large for its face. 

“The Cheshire cat,” Shift muttered. “Looks a lot more terrifying than I thought it would.” 

“What a surprise,” the deep voice spoke from the mouth of that tight and unnatural grin. “I am so unfortunate to not have any tea parties planned ahead for today. But welcome anyways, Alice. We’ve missed you so.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Alice,” Shifter spoke before me. “Like the story.” 

“Good, formalities can be ignored then,” the head continued. Tentatively, I took a few steps towards the light that seemed to emanate from him alone. He glowed like a candle, flickering and changing like the flame itself was alive inside him. 

“She’s not Alice, her name’s Shift,” I said tentatively. 

“It’s not a matter of a name, it’s a matter of a person.” The head glanced down to the lack of its body, then bobbed closer to meet to me. As it walked, its lithe animal body appeared with every step in the air, until the creature was there in all its glory. An emaciated violet cat, nearly hairless. Strange how its presence comforted me. As we met, I could faintly feel Shift’s eyes on me, wide and wary as I regarded the creature. 

“I don’t think we’ve met,” I stared into its strange yellow eyes, then tipped my hat with a light smile. I kept waiting for the fear. All the things I’d read about it, and this world. All of the things I thought I’d feel, and yet here I was, wishing I’d met him sooner. “I’m Rettah.” 

“We’ve never met, and are the oldest of friends.” The cat grinned widely. “It’s good to see you, Hatter.” 

Surprised, I shook my head. “I’m Rettah- not Hatter. Well, I suppose that’s a title, but it’s a bit antiquated.”

“Of course.” 

“Sorry- I guess I was expecting something a little scarier but...” I wrinkled my nose, unsure of what to say. The cat’s eyes narrowed with his grin only growing wider, watching me with trailing orange eyes, then languidly walked through the air. He traveled as though the ground beneath him wasn’t several feet away and ended up circling the ever-nervous Shift. She held the swords in steady hands, but her teeth were gritted as she watched the cat prowl around her. She wanted to be calm, but the Forest affected her like I thought it would me. 

“What do you want?” She asked. 

“Can I not bask?” 

“I’m not your Alice,” she growled. “Do I look like a Goldilocks rip-off to you? I’m a traveler. I chose to be here. Doesn’t your Alice just get swept into random situations? I’m not one for mind games, if that’s what you’re playing for.” 

“What?” I interrupted. “But you said-“ 

“Your Alice is a careful one, Hatter.” The cat stopped beside the head of the girl, and inclined his own bobbled motley of a head toward her. “She hides, and forgets, and misunderstands.” 

“Great. Riddle cat.” She sighed. “Magic annoying riddle cat. I’m not sure why I bother.” My hands turned to fists. I understood what he meant. I could seem to hear him more clearly than she could, or perhaps she was purposely playing the fool. It didn’t matter. He was hinting he could give me answers, and I was growing tired of trying to walk so carefully around the girl who woke me up with a sword at my throat. Even if she did rescue me, she refused to tell me anything. And the Cheshire Cat was known for answers. He could at least give me something. 

“What isn’t she telling me?” 

“War stories,” the cat grinned. 

Her head whipped around to his, her eyes widening. His cocked his head to the side again, tilting it back and forth like a metronome. His tail clicked in time, until I swore I could hear the clockwork he was miming. “Time moves on and one for all but few, doesn’t it? Ticking away on so many lives, one after another. Each disappear with every secret you hold dear. Because it is secrets you hold dearer than any person, isn’t it?” 

“How could you… how are you doing that?” she demanded, moving a sword in front of his face. This time, her hand shook. “I’m not from here. You shouldn’t be able to know anything. Not even something like you. What are you, a telepath? Connected to this world like some kind of eldritch entity? I’ve dealt with it all, I’m not afraid of you. Whatever the fuck you are.” The cat didn’t flinch at the blade inches away from his face. 

“She’s a traveler in time and space,” the cat spoke without wavering. “Traveling from world to world with despair at her heals. No human could hold the powers within her without tearing themselves apart.” I stared at him in disbelief. 

“So you’re going to ignore my own questions and just give up everything I am,” the girl scowled. “You don’t need to run around in business that doesn’t belong to you. He probably wouldn’t believe you anyways.” She wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t in any position to say that was insane, not with a talking magical cat being the one to explain this. But this was Wonderland. Magic was real, if hard to find. I could believe him, but that meant believing her… 

“I fear for my world, shape shifter.” The cat shrugged. “I fear for the fire that you could douse our precious Wonderland in.” 

“Fire…” I muttered. I looked from the cat, to the stranger. She wasn’t normal. That was obvious. She didn’t even look human, the more I watched her. Black hair, purple eyes, strange clothes, weapons I’d never seen before, and the bravado to fight… Anything. Even if it meant getting herself killed. Everything was confusing, but this time I didn’t have to fight my own head to learn. “What are you talking about?”

She flinched, then finally dropped her head, her swords moving down with them. 

“Rettah, I’m not sure-“

“A demon,” the cat finished. She drew her head up with eyes that almost flickered in eye color, for just a moment. 

I took a step back from the glowing cat and the creature he seemed intent on poking with a stick. 

“That’s not true,” she growled. “I’m not a demon. And if you know anything about me, rooting around in my mind like the telepath you are, then you’ll know that I’m not a monster.” 

“… No, I suppose not.” The cat would have frowned if he was capable of it. “You’re a little martyr that can’t complete her struggle with death. A sadder fate than most. A creature more pathetic than me? Now that is an interesting sight.” 

“I’m a time traveler that made a mistake.” She drew her swords back to her sides, and with a smooth motion they retreated into their hilts. She seemed tired now, but that glimmer in her eyes had sent my heart beating. The way she’d looked at him was… Alien. Red eyes. I’d seen them red. The purple seemed sad, and calm, but the red… There was a fire burning inside her and I didn’t want to be the one to let it out. “That’s all it is.” 

“A series of mistakes, you mean.” He was back to smiling again. 

“A series of mistakes me that weren’t entirely my fault,” she corrected him again. She ran a hand through her wild hair, then glanced at me. I flinched, and she almost seemed to do the same. “I’m… Not a monster. I’m not inhuman. I’m not a creature.” She watched me, a sincere expression that begged me with her eyes. “I didn’t want you to be afraid.” 

I bit my lip. She reminded me so much of Margret sometimes, with sad looks that seemed to want to comfort. But there was something that lay just beneath the surface, and she wouldn’t tell me. “If you want me to believe you, I want answers.” I wanted to stand my ground. I was tired of hiding behind vague answers and attempts of false amnesia. “You said you couldn’t remember things. You were pretending to be the same as me. But you were lying.” 

“Not completely,” she admitted. “But…”

“She’s a harbinger of Death,” the cat supplied.

“No, you damn cat, I’m not that. Shut up.” 

“Watch your anger.”

“Go to hell.” Even when she seemed like she was angered, there didn’t seem to be any real rage behind it. 

Tired. 

“I’m not a monster, I’m not death, I’m a time and dimensional traveler. I’ve gone from place to place because I was thrown into this for stupid reasons. They’ve got not bearings on me or you, but that’s what I do. I travel, I fail, and I run away. I’m…” she gritted her teeth again. “I’m useless. At this point, I was just looking for a place to rot. And I’m your damn Alice, because this so happened to be the place I landed while letting myself drift away. Maybe it’s fate, ending up in a place like this.” She looked up, watching the branches of the old and blackened trees that stretched motionlessly above us. “Like the stories. The stories that you think are real history, and the stories from the worlds I’ve been through, where they’re just that. Stories. In a book. It’s just a book, that you read, in a library. You’d be surprised how many worlds are like that. They’re stories in one world, and real in another.” She smiled a faint, sad smile. “I suppose that’s impossible to believe. Like most of what I’ve said.” 

I swallowed, trying to digest what she’d said. “And a war veteran?” She flinched visibly this time. 

“I’ve… Been around the block. Seen things. I didn’t travel because I wanted to, at first. I’ve been wrapped up in shit you wouldn’t believe. Been shit you wouldn’t believe. And I’m here because I was running away. I failed. I couldn’t live up to the expectations in a world before, and I let everyone down.” She paused, going quiet. Her eyes drifted down again, this time looking to her hands. Illuminated by the cat, they had a warm yellow glow. The rest of her was shaded the same way, as though it was a candle that lit up the world around us. “I let people die. I ran away because I couldn’t deal with the consequences. You’re traveling with a stranger from a strange land, who doesn’t have a home. I’m not supposed to be here, but I’m not supposed to be anywhere, and that’s the way I’ve always lived.”

“Why would you do that to yourself? To punish yourself?” I shook my head. “That’s no way to live.”

“I’m one infected with worlds before. That’s what you’re afraid of. They’re things that I can control, but are capable of so much more destruction than anything I’ve ever seen. I run to make sure they never get out. They’re the real monsters.” She looked up to me. “I’m sorry I lied. I didn’t think you’d be able to understand. You’re a mess about as big as me right now, but you can’t even remember what happened. I didn’t need to add to your plate.”

“I… I don’t know.” Her eyes and mine met. I kept thinking I’d see red in them. “Your eyes…”

“Purple that turns to red.” She nodded. “Something evil. Something terrible, that wants the world to die. Something that only I can keep at bay.”

“You said you weren’t a monster.” 

“I’m not,” she answered sincerely. So tired, and said. I wanted to tell her it would be alright. I wanted to ask her a million questions. I wanted to hug her. “I’m the one who keeps the monster at bay. I just thought, I could keep that a secret from you, and we could just make it to the Capital, and we wouldn’t have to go through things that you wouldn’t understand.” 

“I…” I couldn’t pretend to understand what kind of person she was. She didn’t seem to be something human, from the moment I’d seen her. But now that I saw her for what she was, the strange thing that wasn’t supposed to be here, I could almost stomach her presence. I just wanted to know more. 

There was something wrong with me, to constantly want to know more about her. It was like a disease, a hunger for knowledge. I could feel it within myself, something unhealthy. 

“Your very presence is why the creature persists,” the Cheshire interjected. “Without you, you wouldn’t have to hide the creature who wouldn’t exist.” 

“I can’t-“ She spoke, but I broke in. 

“Are you telling her to kill herself?” I asked. I glared at the incredulous cat. “You’re one to talk.”

“I thought we had a rapport,” the cat purred.

“We don’t, if you’re going to be a hypocrite.” I scowled. “I’ve read up enough on this forest to know that you’re one of the reasons it still exists, one of the reasons its as dangerous as it is. And yet you’re the one telling her to let herself get killed. Why don’t you, Cheshy? You’d save so many people.”

“For the good of Wonderland.” 

“No, not the good of Wonderland, the good of your idealized Wonderland.” His smiled dropped even lower. For once, it almost didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re just trying to stick to old ways, hiding the magical parts in one large forest hoping that one day you’ll be able to unleash them again, right? But you’re just making it impossible to navigate the world without serious harming coming to a large portion who come through here. But I’m sure you have your reasons.” I took a breath, trying to let the anger leech away. I didn’t know where it had come from. But those sad eyes on Shift seemed to win out over the red that I kept glimpsing in my mind. She reminded me of myself. I was lost, and so was she. I couldn’t let her be told this. “Maybe she’s bad. Maybe there’s something wrong with her. But I didn’t have anyone else when I woke up. No one else, but her.”

“Rettah…” She murmured. “You might be putting a little too much faith in this. We barely even know each other. The Cheshire isn’t wrong.” 

“He is,” I insisted with wide eyes. “You don’t deserve to die, right? No one does. And you’ve been nice to me. You’ve helped me. Regardless of what he says, what you’ve done, I needed someone to help me when I could barely figure out what was happening. And you… You released me. You gave me my life back. I can at the very least vouch for your life, and help find you a place with civilization.” 

Her eyes widened, then her mouth curled into the ghost of a smile. “You really are just a kid, aren’t you.” 

“And you’re the strangest thing I’ve ever heard of.” I smiled. “A time traveler? I guess no wonder you wouldn’t tell me. I don’t think I’d have ever guessed something like that.” 

“Time and space.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “And honestly, that’s kind of the… easiest thing to explain.”

“We’ll have time along the way, won’t we? Just no more secrets.” I wanted to know more about her. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to see her smile. “I have so much I don’t know already and-“ I froze. “Asentual.” 

I turned to the cat. He was licking his paws methodically, not even seeming to notice either of us. “Tell me about him,” I said. 

“Hm? I thought you two were busy.” He yawned, stretched his back, and grinned once more. 

“I want to know about my other self. You could read Shift, so obviously you can read me, right?” 

“It doesn’t take reading to know a poem engraved into one’s heart. Yes, Asentual. Your other self. The evil one, yes? That’s easier than jumping worlds.” I nodded with a swallow. The cat closed his eyes, and the light faded slightly without the added glow of those yellow orbs. “He called himself many names. A shining light for all the diseased of this wonderful country.” 

“Sounds like a real upstanding guy,” Shift spoke gruffly, but I stayed entranced by the strange cat. 

“Who was he?”

“A monster.” 

I shook my head. “I’ve heard that- I-I know that. I know that he’s a slaver, I know that he holds company with ogres, I know he’s not a good person. But who was he? He’s been living my life for so long that I-“

“Looking for answers won’t fill the hole in your heart.” 

“… What are you talking about?” I lay a hand a hand on my heart without meaning to. “I just want to know.” 

“Such a thirst for knowledge.” The cat lay on the air, turning upwards on his back and looking ahead into the heavy and thick branches above us. His eyes illuminated the strange and wicked black ridges. “But your thirst lies in the wrong position. You don’t stop to savour what you’ve been given, even as you eat yourself to death and sacrifice your precious sanity. You’re here to try to learn about how to live again. After not being for so long, it’s difficult to breathe. Difficult to think. And you want to use a stomach that hasn’t eaten in years. But-“

“I want to know who Asentual was,” I said firmly. “I don’t care about the years I’ve lost. I’ll find Margy. I’ll find a way to make up for lost time. But how can I do that, if I don’t know about who knows me, who it was that was before me?” 

“He’s not going to answer you, Rettah.” Footsteps echoed against the trees as Shift left the two of us and started to continue down the dark path. “We’re wasting time talking to this cat when all he’s doing is antagonizing us.”

“I can’t just leave,” I whimpered. “He told me about you, didn’t he? And that was supposed to be impossible to explain. Why is it so hard to know about someone that’s only ever been in Wonderland?”

“You have legs, don’t you?” The cat pointed them out to me with an outstretched paw. “Right there, beneath your waist. Hatter’s legs.” 

“I’m not Hatter. I’m Rettah.” 

“Same difference. He was a stubborn one too.” He grinned wide. “Had a pet dog, a horse, and a penchant for running away.” Shift paused at the edge of where Cheshire’s light ended with a sigh, and crouched to the ground. 

“Not worth it, knowing your evil twin,” she muttered. “There’s nothing to gain but hatred for them.”

I flinched, but focused on the Cat. Even if she was right, I wanted to know. I needed to satisfy this need. “Running away where? And pet dog- what do you mean by that? He liked animals?” 

“Nasty thing, gangly and thin no matter what you fed him. Fiercely loyal, though. Curly hair, went by the name of Benjamin of the Court of Diamonds.” 

“D… Dog…” I flushed. “A person he called a dog.” The cat nodded. 

“Of the same stock as the Hatter. He held his own host of secrets, some from the Hatter himself. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this world is full of them. Your thirst for knowledge will be a long and arduous task. And you’ll never see it all.” 

“I’m not going to let that stop me. Where can I find Benji?”

“He’ll never want to see you.” The Cheshire shrugged. “You’re his master in all but name and eyes. The curse of the uncanny, is that you’re so close to what he loved that he hates you all the more.”

“I wouldn’t want to make him upset. I just want to know.” 

“As you were then.” The cat’s tail disappeared first, then the body, then the face, until only the outstretched paw and grin remained. The paw pointed ahead to the path. “Continue,” the mouth said conversationally. “You’ll find answers. The hatter was beloved by many. Hated by few. You’re a walking tragedy.” 

“You said he was evil,” I blinked.

“This world is evil.” The mouth widened, until it was almost impossibly wide in the thin air. “And the world grieves for a missing wonder.” 

“Then… They don’t deserve them,” I turned, walking towards the purple-eyed stranger. “I’m glad I could fix Wonderland just a little bit by getting rid of someone like that. I won’t ever let him return.” Shift got up at my approach with a smile, pushing her hair out of her face again. 

“Shall we continue then?”

“Into the darkness?” I smiled sheepishly. “It looks like it just gets darker.” 

“Hey, cat.” She called out to the grin that had all but disappeared. “You want to help us with a little light?”

“Anything for my dear Alice.” The grin drifted over to us and brought with it just enough light to see ahead a few feet. The branches in front of us seemed to grip at the air like old and gnarled fingers. In the dim, wavering light, they seemed to move. Yet, I felt calm. The light was comforting, like a small and cheery torch. Shift must have been terrified, but I was once again, oddly at home.

“The world you lived and loved, it’s lost.” The grin of the Cheshire broke the silence between us. 

“I’m not talking to you,” she sighed, but I blinked as I looked over at them. 

“I don’t need your help antagonizing her, Cheshire. I’ll let her tell me, in her own time.”

“You misunderstand.” The cat grinned, and his eyes appeared just so they could close as he lead us down the winding path. “A world lost, and loved. It hurts the heart of Wonderland. I understand the pain, of having something broken into pieces.” 

Shift glanced at the cat’s dreamy expression, then dropped her eyes. “I guess this isn’t the normal Wonderland, if there’s slavery and monsters.”

“No. It hasn’t been that way for a while. There was once a time where I was safe, traveling the world. A time where I didn’t need to hide in a forest to keep the last of the wild alive. I wish for that day to come again. It’s why I love you, Alice. You remind me of a hope I once had.” 

“You’ve misplaced your hope. I’m not an Alice. I’m not even here because I followed a rabbit. I’m not going to be able to help you.” 

“Help me? I’m not the one in desperate need.” 

“Hey,” I interrupted. “Both of you, look!” Ahead of us, the sunlight was starting to peek through the trees. “We’re already at the other side!” Excitedly, I gained speed, only to pause in uncertainty. “That wasn’t supposed to happen that quickly. How did we get here?”

“This is my forest, Hatter,” the Cat’s voice was faint, and when I turned around he was all but a ghost beside Shift. “I can choose to help or hinder as I please. But you aren’t needed in an old and forgotten world. Find your sister, find your life, and perhaps one day you’ll return to me.” The eyes of the cat opened again, stretching wide. “In another life.” 

“I’ll… I’ll do that.” I smiled tentatively. “Thank you.” With one last motion, the Cat nodded his head, then disappeared before both our eyes. With him went the last of the light. It was no longer needed with daylight peeking from around the corner. “Come on,” I motioned for Shift to follow as I went back to jogging towards the light.

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” She ran after me, and the two of us gained speed until we broke out of the clutches of the dark forest and through to the other side. 

I tripped on a root and nearly fell into the side of a rock slab, only gaining balance again when Shift caught up to me. The sky was bright and blue, and the golden sun beat down on us with a warmth I hadn’t felt in a long time. Ahead, the world was a wasteland. The purple-eyed girl and I took in the ruins of fields, farmhouses that had won over others in their structures standing the test of time. Dotting through the landscape were boulders, stands of trees far off miles away. The hills rolled, but the overwhelming flatness showed that far enough ahead, a horizon hinted at civilization. I squinted my eyes, but I couldn’t make out more than a smudge that might have been the Capital. What I could make out were the clusters of buildings that rose and fell along the path that we’d taken. Towns of humans, some left abandoned, but others I’m sure still held secret life. 

“It’s like a fairy tale.” I heard the girl breathe. “In a storybook. It’s beautiful.” 

“It’s empty.” I stared ahead. “It makes me a bit sad.”

“That’s what fairy tales do sometimes.” She started ahead, and I followed after her. “They make you sad. It’s a part of the charm.”

“I think I’d prefer a story with a happy ending.”

She shrugged. “In order to have a story, there needs to be sad parts. But the real world, it doesn’t ever have a happy ending.” 

“Are you so sure about that?” I smiled. “Your life isn’t over yet.” My smile dropped when she looked away. 

“I guess you’re right,” she muttered. 

“Well…” I looked over at her, biting my lip, then took her hand. “It’s not a fairy tale.” Squeezing her hand, I smiled softly at her when she whipped her head back around to me. “It’s real life, and you can choose what happens to you. Because you’re not being told where to go or what to do. You make your ending.” 

Her blush was cute, but I couldn’t look at her for more than a moment before turning away with a flush of my own. “I-I mean-“ I dropped my hand. “You can stay here, however long you want. And make your own story.” 

When I glanced back, she was giggling. 

“Thanks for the invitation,” she laughed. “I might take you up on it.” I felt stupid, but I smiled goofily none the less. Hearing her laugh made me happy.


	4. Chapter 4

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I murmured to Shift as she approached the tavern. The carefully built wooden building had been bustling only moments before when we approached, but not with nobility. Now it was muted whispers and whimpers as I reached for the door. More than a few of the brown and black haired humans had already scattered from the front the instant we’d been seen from the winding hilly road, leaving the outside of the establishment deserted. Its foundations were stone, but the second floored building was built almost entirely of wood from the small forest that surrounding the right of it, more a copse of trees than anything else in the middle of this wasteland. I could almost smell the fear that wafted from the inside of the inn, and internally wished we could just pass it by. Perhaps Shift would get a fancy towards the trees instead, and we could leave the humans alone. Just the color of my hair alone was enough of a warning signal. I wondered if they realized I was as terrified as they were. 

“It’s the only populated place I could find from the road and we need the food. It’s getting dark, regardless, and we’ve been avoiding nobility the entire time we’ve been walking,” she responded, looking inside with a critical expression. She was right, of course. Knowing that my persona would have caught the eye of anyone with colored hair, we kept to the edge of the road and hid behind boulders and abandoned buildings every time we saw the someone approach from the horizon. It made for a poor and tedious journey, but neither of us were interested in dealings with the likes of Jeck again. Even if they weren’t ogres, I’d made it a goal in life not to deal with the likes of slavers. Anyone that voluntarily wished to subject a being to pain and suffering against their will… I didn’t want to consort with.

Once Shift saw the interior, her face brightened. “No other redheads or ogres, just people. It’ll be fine. We’re safe here. You’ve got that bag of money. Besides, don’t you want to sleep in a bed for once?” It was a good idea on paper, dealing with humans instead of nobles. But she didn’t understand just how important hair color was. They’d lynch me, I was sure of it. I couldn’t show my face in a den of humans as much as I couldn’t in front of a slave caravan.

“It’s not the same, I’m a noble, I told you about-” I tried to hiss to her, but she was already walking past me. With a sinking heart, I watched her go, helpless to do anything but follow after her. It took all of my power to slink after her and try to keep my hat from showing too much of my rat’s nest of hair. I’d never seen free humans before, and certainly not as many as this. Eyes had bored into me as I held the door for Shift, then let it close and almost jumped with the loud slap of wood against the frame, and they continued to stare as I walked through the inn. I had to resist the urge to flinch away and run. Even with the heat from the setting sun outside, there was a chill on the back of my neck. 

She was nervous too, keeping her hands on the hilts at her belt. Maybe nervous was the wrong word. Prepared. Wary. Yet somehow, she still made it to the front of the tavern that had been styled as a regular bar and smiled at the young human man with ruffled brown hair. “Sorry to bother you, but my companion and I are in need of a place to stay for the night, and some food.” 

The murmuring din turned to silence, and I flinched once again at her words that would get us nowhere. She didn’t understand, no matter how much I’d taught her down the way from the Forest. The man stared at the girl with wide eyes, then looked up to me expectantly. Confusion in his eyes. I was feeling about the same, with a mixture of hope that he wouldn’t send whatever guards he had through the back door, after me. 

“Is… Is she yours, sir?” His voice was so strained I had a hard time hearing him at first. But his was the only voice in the entire inn. Everything else was silence. He stood alone at the bar, hand frozen over a glass he was about to clean, and the few humans left in the establishment were starting to sneak up the stairs out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t pay them any attention, for fear that they think I might stop them.

“Ah… No.” I bit my lip. “She’s not… I… Um…” 

“I’m no slave,” Shift finished for me. The barkeep snapped his head back to her with a quizzical and fearful look, then gulped. 

“I’m not sure our establishment is… Right, for your friend, miss.” She sighed and poked at an abandoned cup on the corner. I wished I had the strength to grab her and leave. And perhaps teach her that this was a terrible idea. 

“I can’t pretend to understand the politics of what’s happening right now, but he’s no danger to any of you.” 

“I-I’m sorry, but I can’t believe that.” He turned back to me, staring hard, and recognition crossed his features. The glare that followed just confirmed that I should have had one foot out the door this whole time. He was murderous behind his terror. He was going to call mercenaries. Pull me out of the inn, perhaps kill me to send a message. 

“He’s the one who took my mother.”

“Mother- him?” She blinked, glancing back at me. “I… Guess we should have known. So even humans know you.” She digested the words, then sighed and sat at one of the empty seats of the now utterly empty bar. “Well, there goes that plan. Sorry about that.” 

Of course they’d know about me, this was the main road. Asentual probably spent years on it, doing his own evil. “I’m sorry,” I gulped, finally finding my voice. “I… Asentual must have hurt you.”

“What are you talking about?” His gaze hardened. 

“Magic,” Shift answered for me when I couldn’t. “Apparently that’s a thing here.” 

“Magic? What do you mean magic – you know what, I don’t bloody care. Miss, I’m just here to run this place for my father. I don’t understand what kind of games you’re playing here, if this is some kind of new slaving tactic, but you and the hatter can’t be here. We’ve been hit enough with the slavers without Asentual coming. Please, give us peace.” His voice turned desperate as he looked back at me. “I beg you.” 

“I’m not here to do anything.” I raised my hands in defense, but dropped them when he took a step back from the bar out of fear. Sympathy overthrew me. He was afraid. He didn’t even think to hurt me, he just didn’t want me to hurt him. And I was uncertain if I could do anything to assuage it. “I mean it, I’m not Asentual. Look, my eyes.” I pulled off my hat to show him. The shock of hair fell into my vision, but I drew it away with a hand. “My name’s Rettah. I’m not a danger to you.” 

“How…” The man stared in disbelief, then shook his head. His voice grew shaky. “It doesn’t matter. You two are ruining business, a-and I’ll have to ask you to leave.” 

“Business?” Shift gestured around us. “You’re an inn. They didn’t run anywhere but upstairs. They’re just using your facilities. And I promise, we’re not-” 

“Please, I can’t have you be here. Nobles draw away business.” He didn’t even seem to hear her. “This establishment is meant to be for safety of humans. I’m not even sure how you got here without the warning sounding, but you’re not meant to be here, a-and-“

“David. That’s enough.” All of us flinched at that, and a heavy silence covered the inn. The deeper voice belonged to a balding man on the side of the of the room, who stepped through a doorway to the back of the inn. His face was worn and wrinkled, with lines that showed he cried more than he laughed. His eyes drooped when he looked at the boy, and when he looked at me, they drooped even further. 

“Father-“ The boy started, then stopped as he clasped his hands. “The noble was just leaving, I had this handled.”

“Asentual won’t hurt us.” The man looked my way, and I tried to seem as submissive as possible. But instead of yelling, he nodded in a deep bow of his head. Respect. That was the last thing I expected from a human. 

“He won’t?” I asked in confusion. “But he’s a slaver.” 

“He’s not just a slavery, but then… You’re not him, are you. Your eyes.” It was the man’s turn to stare as he seemed to realize the difference. “They’re not yellow.”

“Yes,” I bit my lip, unsure how to continue. “My name isn’t Asentual, it’s Rettah. It’s a… Complicated story. But I’m not- We just wanted food, and a place to rest. I’m confused why you think Asentual wouldn’t do you harm.” 

“… Perhaps we should take a seat, all of us.” He glanced to the girl. “Is she yours?” 

“Once again, I belong to myself,” Shift turned around on the stool and stood back up. “Rettah is a slaver as much as I’m a slave. A talk sounds about right. I too, would love to know why you think Asentual has anything salvageable about him.” 

….

“Another glass please, David.” The balding man sat across from me at the round table. He let his legs splay to the side. Underneath his cropped breeches, blue veins from many years of standing crisscrossed the mottled white skin. His hands were veined too, but strong as he held up his glass for another drought of ale. David poured it slowly. His hands trembled every time our eyes met, so I kept my face to the other side of the inn. Shift was there on my left with a look many miles away. She was in her own mind. Most likely, remembering the worlds before this one. I’d not managed to get details from her about where she’d been other than the occasional comment, but it was better than nothing. I’d learned that amnesia was common for her, though this world wasn’t one of those times. She understood my feelings somewhat, about desperately trying to remember what didn’t feel like yourself. I decided to talk her at her word. We’d been making it a rule not to lie to each other. If I didn’t believe my travelling companion, I was afraid I may go mad.

“There’s a good lad,” The man finally sighed in pleasure when the glass was full. The young man set the large flagon to the side and sat down beside his father, as far away from me as he could manage. “I do like our ale here. It’s one of my great grandfather’s greatest achievements. From the grove by the inn, you see. Certain snap dragon patch that we use for that tinge of sweetness.” 

“Snap dragons, eh?” Shift leaned back. “I think I remember hearing about that in a book once.” 

I coughed nervously. “You said you knew something about Asentual?”

“He’s a bastard,” David muttered under his breath. His father took a long swill of his ale, then set his glass back down on the lonely table. Only he had a drink; I’d never tasted alcohol and didn’t plan on starting, and Shift seemed to be wary when she was offered the drink. 

“I don’t disagree.” Shift nodded at the younger man. “I was assaulted by him.”

“Then what is this, you traveling with him?” David demanded. He shoved a palm against the table. “He’s a ruthless bloody bastard who stole my mother, and you’ve got no business showing your faces around here if you’re going to play mind games!” 

“That’s enough, son,” the elder man belched. “Regardless of what Asentual’s done to this young lady, he’s not done us harm.” 

“But mother –“

“I didn’t want to tell you this until you were older, but…” The man sighed deeply and looked longingly at the glass he’d emptied. “Your mother went willingly with Asentual. I didn’t have the heart, before, but…”

It was my turn to gape at the man. “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Slavery isn’t something you go into willingly. It’s a horrible practice. Women especially, the turnover rate on entertainment girls… I’ve read things…” 

“Asentual’s a strange case when it comes to nobility. I felt the same, the first time he showed himself.” The balding human squinted at me. “It’s uncanny, seeing everything in him but your face. But you hold yourself differently… Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, I’ve not seen him in years. When I did last, I was a younger man. But my wife was ill, and I didn’t know how to fix her. He offered me a deal. Paid me money and gave me his word that he would bring her somewhere where they’d take care of her.”

“Why would you agree to his word?” Shift interjected. “If nobles are as… Elitist, as everyone says, not to mention Asentual being infamous, why let him take her? Did you need the money that badly to sell your wife?” 

The man shook his head. “No, dear. She was ill enough that I didn’t think she’d survive another month. I kept it away from David, but it was going too far. I remember her holding my arm when I tried to leave the bedside table, telling me that if anything happened I’d take care of her boy. She’d lost hope, and no one in miles had the ability to care for her. I let him take her while she could still stand.”

The silence around the table hung like a corpse on a noose. I felt sick to my stomach at the thought. Slavery, or death. This is why I never wanted to leave the palace. “Why didn’t you tell me?” David’s voice croaked. 

“You were a child, son.” The man smiled sadly. “I didn’t want you to know about any of this. I didn’t tell you she was taken, either. You heard that from the rest of the town, and I didn’t know what to say to that. I couldn’t lie in the face of so many witnesses.” 

No one should have to suffer that. No one should have had to choose something so terrible. He would still have never seen his wife again. And Asentual facilitated that. “But you didn’t attack me.” I blinked. “So…”

“He returned with a letter. It was her handwriting. She told me the name of the establishment he’d sold her to, that they’d healed her, and everything else she possibly could within the confines of a few pages. He brought it to me himself, and told me he’d done everything he could.”

“… He could have made her write it, under coercion,” Shift ventured, but the man shook his head. 

“I don’t believe he would have done that. He could have just never passed by here again, chosen to let me wither away waiting. But he didn’t. He brought me a letter to give me hope that my wife was safe. And I believe she’s still out there. I don’t like to think about what kind of business she did, or what he made her do. If he was anything, he was still a professional. He never let me forget that. But he was true to his word. Probably made into a cook now, but she’s still out there all the same.” The man took a deep breath, then closed his eyes. “I told the watcher if he ever saw a noble in a crooked top hat, keep the bell still. Let that one in, I told him, he’s the only one that thinks about us. Maybe the only one that realizes we all have lives. The only color-haired ponce I think I’d ever trust.” 

My stomach twisted in knots as I tried to digest his words. But every time I let them sink into my mind, I found myself drowning. “So…” I bit my lip. “If he died… Then…”

“I’m probably not the only one he’s done that for.” He looked over at me with a glint in his eye. “You’re not Asentual, are you son.”

“No. I’m… I’m really not.” The man slowly nodded. 

“There’s something there, though.” His eyes narrowed. “I’ve never seen a noble look so scared. Maybe I haven’t seen enough, but that face of yours… I didn’t think I’d ever see someone look so guilty. You’re a kind soul. I can see that. You don’t seem to care about the hair, or the eyes. I don’t know what it is with you but…” He rose, his crinkled legs barely catching his weight as he rolled himself onto the floor, then slowly began to make his way back to the door in the far side of the tavern. “Forgive me, but thinking about this sort of history, it doesn’t settle my stomach well. I think I’d like some time alone, with the dragon snaps.”

“Of course,” Shift inclined her head. “Thank you for telling us. You didn’t have to.” 

“Mother…” David uttered, tears prickling the corners of his eyes. I flinched, looking away. The knot grew larger in my stomach.

“You’re free to have a room for the night, second on your left.” The man didn’t pause in his walk as he spoke. “I’ll send the assistant to hold the tavern, Davey. Come on, we have things to talk about.” The boy left quickly after his father, leaving the two of us in silence. 

I stared at the round, wooden table that wobbled at every touch, as Shift stole a half chicken from one of the abandoned place settings. She dug into it with her teeth out of the corner of my eye, chewing like an animal, and swallowing it like she hadn’t eaten for days. She didn’t pause in going for another mouthful but seemed to get slower and more refined the more she ate. But that noise, the sound of teeth gnawing against bone and gristle, it twisted in my head until it felt like I would explode. 

“How can you eat?” I asked. 

“What?” 

She blinked, setting down the chicken onto the chipped plate she’d got it from. 

“I can’t even think about anything else but that family. It’s… All this guilt, and its not mine. But I did it. Somehow, I still did that to them.” I gripped my arm. “I did… I did that. I ruined their lives. And so many others.” 

“You saved their mother.” 

“Took her away from them!” I cried. 

The two of us stared at each other, taking in the other. Her eyes were still far away, even as she watched me. I had never felt so alone before. She seemed cold. Every time I thought I had gotten closer to her, seen something of her that made me understand my companion a little more, made me think I could care about her, she’d change. She’d get emotionless. Now, she looked like a stranger again.

“Rettah,” She whispered, and set aside the chicken to lay a hand on my shaking palm. “You aren’t him.”

“But I feel like I was. Like I must have been. Or at the very least, I must have been something like him. I let him go. Like you. You said you had a monster inside you, something terrible. Shift the traveler. Shift the lock, more like. Asentual was mine, and I let him free.” 

“You’re not the same, and you can’t be blamed for something like that.” She squeezed my hand, and I resisted the urge to move away. “Besides…” She sighed regretfully. “I think, maybe, I was putting the wrong impression of him on you-“

“Not you too-“ But she covered my mouth before I could finish. 

“I’m not saying he was some savior. Or even good. He obviously manipulated those people. But I… it doesn’t feel right with me, making him into something he isn’t. I established a narrative that you agreed to, but we’ve learned now. From the Cat, from the innkeeper. Asentual had his ups and downs. Whatever he was, it wasn’t pure evil. And I don’t think you should pretend that he was. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to live with that inside you. Besides,” she smiled faintly. “He’s dead. For better or for worse, the hatter is dead. And all that’s left, is Rettah. You get to make your mark and live your life.” 

I sniffled, pressing closer to her. She was warm. Even if her eyes were cold, I missed that. I missed feeling like I could depend on something. 

“I miss Margret,” I whimpered as I felt myself start to tear up again. I was so sick of crying, but they never seemed to stop. 

“I know.” She ran a hand through my hair to catch that rat’s nest that always found its way into my eyes. “We’ll see her soon.” 

“I miss things making sense.”

She made a noise that almost sounded like a chuckle, cupping my face in her hands. “Did Wonderland ever make sense to you?” 

“It did once.” When Margret and I were together, at the palace. She was always so supportive, always wanted to know about the things I did. We spent more and more time apart with my studies, but we always came back to each other in the end. I’d tell her everything I’d learned about the world, and she’d listen with the same bright smile I’d come to expect. And now I realized that I’d taken advantage of such a life. I didn’t know how much I’d miss that smile, until it was gone. And Shift’s… Hers seemed like a hollow shell. 

“Maybe it will again.” Purple eyes bored into me, watching me with so much sadness I thought I’d fall into them. They were mesmerizing. Beautiful. So alien and strange, like a piece of the world not making any sense anymore. I begged for things to work like they used again, and yet I was so drawn to them. And her mouth, a line of red in a thin smile that didn’t reach those eyes. I’d never felt like this before. Looking up at her, my heart seemed to beat faster. 

“Eat some chicken,” She handed it to me. I wrinkled my nose at the thought of the others returning to stolen food, but then I remembered that they were mostly likely not coming back as long as I was here. “And then we’re going to sleep. Both of us. We need it.” 

“Right…” I looked from the chicken, to her, then tentatively tore off a piece of the flesh. I didn’t leave her vicinity. She smelled sweet.

The two of us walked up to the second floor heavy with food and thoughts. I didn’t think about it at first, entering the room, how there was only one bed. I sat down on it with a contented sigh, feeling the mattress take my weight like a pillow in comparison to the rocks and ground we’d slept on before. When Shift moved to the other side and lay down with the intentions of sleeping immediately, I finally put the pieces together, and began to blush as I pulled off my shoes. 

“We’ll… be sleeping in the same bed.” Shift paused with her back to me, then slowly turned until I could just catch her eyes among that mess of black tendrils. “I suppose I could sleep on the floor,” I added quickly. 

“… No.” She said, hesitating before she turned to me fully. She took my hand again, and before I knew it I was falling against the mattress, the blanket tangled between us. She stared intently at me. I flushed darker the longer she held that strange gaze. “You can sleep here, if you like. I don’t mind.”

“I d-don’t think that would be appropriate, do you?” I stammered. 

She smiled thinly again. “We slept nearby each other at night, didn’t we? How’s this any different?”

“Because… I-it’s a bed, and…” 

“You like me.”

My cheeks heated. “I-I-I-…” I couldn’t exactly say no. But saying yes, that was too bold. I couldn’t say something like that to her. She was a time traveler, she was so different, so much stronger and stranger than me. I was just another person she’d met in her travels.

“It’s okay.” She squeezed my hand. “I don’t mind if you do.” 

“B-but then we’re in the same bed.”

“I don’t think you’re going to do anything to me, are you? You’re not Asentual.” 

“I’m…” 

“You’re not.” She pressed a kiss to my cheek, then moved slowly. I found myself stumbling back against the bed until my head hit the headboard. She pulled herself over me, her hands holding up her body as she walked it closer and closer towards me. She ended with her body pressed against mine, still looking at me with that strange expression. Her arms and legs held her up on either side of me. “You’re sweet, and kind, and good.” 

I stared up at her mutely. Her body was so small, so thin and felt so vulnerable. Even in this gangly form that I still hadn’t gotten used to, I was infinitely taller, and probably stronger. But her arms were strong, unwavering as she held herself up. Her body, pressed against mine, watching me with confidence that seemed misplaced. I hadn’t even thought to dream of something like this. 

“You’re a sweet kid, you know.” Her face grew softer. “I don’t want to do anything that would hurt you.” 

“You’re not,” I breathed. “Trust me.” I could handle it. I could. Her being this close, I could handle this. 

“You’re just a child,” she pressed her face against my chest. 

“I’m… Not completely,” I reasoned. The more I spoke the less tongue-tied I felt. “I’ve just been asleep. A very, very long time.” 

“I don’t want to do anything. We barely know each other.” She looked down at my hands, tangling them in hers. “But I recognize this feeling. I know what it is that you keep looking at when you see me. And it’s sweet. I haven’t been able to think like this for a very, very long time… I’d always been so focused on something else. Other people that needed my help. But I’ve missed this.” 

“Missed?” I asked nervously. 

“… As a traveler.” She gave a sidelong glance back at me, tightening her grip on my hand. “I’ve been around. Been different people, losing my mind and memories over and over again. I’ve been with people before. But it feels good to have everything right this time. I can finally make my own decisions, my own choices.” 

“What decision d-do you want to make now?” She flushed faintly. “Well… I…” I had to say it. I wanted to say it. I didn’t want to back down. I’d never done it before, but if there was ever going to be a time, this would be it.

“I like you,” I said quickly. “Can we- we can hold each other? Until we fall asleep?” 

“Hold each other…” She repeated, staring at me. Slowly, she began to smile, giggling to herself. “You’re sweet.”

“I-I just really like being around you.” I flushed darker. “I’m sorry if I came on too strong.” 

“You’re fine.” She moved to the side, and pressed her face into my shoulder. 

“Don’t you feel that?”

“I do.” 

“Like every time we touch, or I look at you…”

“I feel it, Rettah.”

“Okay,” I murmured, feeling the heaviness of sleep come from all of the food I’d eaten. “… Goodnight.” I pressed my face against her hair, the sweet smell that it always had. But there was something there, a faint metallic tinge buried beneath the almost fruity scent that drew me closer. 

I knew it well enough, the smell of blood. 

I didn’t ask any questions.


	5. Chapter 5

The morning sun flicked against my eyelids through the closed blinds. I opened my eyes to look at the bland ceiling of the building, where thin strands of light bounced even here. In my half-awake drowsiness, I could hear the sound of whispers. It was a soft noise, something almost sweet. I closed my eyes again. I must have still been close enough to dream, and I didn’t want to leave where I’d been. Everyone I cared about was there. Childhood friends, Margy, her Majesty the Queen, and my favorite guards. I’d invited them for tea, and everyone had shown up, even my new friend, Cheshire. I’d never been so happy to see everyone there. I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing everything I was supposed to do. The only thing I worried about was whether I’d pass my tutor’s exam or not. And I knew I could. I was a bright boy, that’s what they’d always said about me. I was the smartest, destined to be the Right Hand of the Queen. I would make them proud. I would do everything in my power to make the Queen proud. She’d raised me from nothing, singlehandedly picked me and Margy to be her wards. I wouldn’t ever want to fail her. A happy Queen, that was a good Queen. But if the Queen was angry, like when I’d accidentally eaten her tarts, then that would… Not be a good Queen. 

“Shut up…” The whispers converged into a single voice. One that wasn’t a part of my dream. Shift’s voice carried to my left, and with it came a twitch of her body.

I turned ever so slightly with a blink of surprise to see her nestled against me, shaking faintly. Any dreams faded in an instant with the realization that the girl who’d told me she liked me wasn’t a dream herself. Her form seemed even smaller than before, and the eyes under her lids moved uncontrollably. Whatever her dreams were, they couldn’t have been good. Her entire body convulsed, and she kept muttering nothings in her sleep. They occasionally formed words, but I could barely hear them. I couldn’t leave her like this.

“Shift,” I shook her shoulder.

I didn’t expect to end up on my back again. But in a flash of movement, she was on me with her swords in a scissored position at my throat and wild eyes that looked like they’d slay me at any moment. 

The tiny squeak came from me. Whatever I’d felt before, I was certainly awake now.

It took a moment for her to realize it was me. Her eyes kept twitching from my heaving chest, to the swords, and then to my throat, so close to the blades that she’d impaled the pillows with behind me. I could almost feel the cold metal against the skin. I gulped, and the change in movement pressed the blade ever closer to my throat. Wickedly sharp.

“Rettah…” She finally said. Her shoulders sagged, and she let the swords fall, pressing the buttons smoothly with her eyes more hollow than ever. She saw right through me, staring at nothing with a haunted expression. “I… I’m sorry.” 

“I shouldn’t have woken you up that way,” I whimpered. “I’m sorry.” 

“You didn’t know. You shouldn’t have to deal with it. I just…” Her arms were shaking. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to this.” 

“Not used to sleeping in a bed?” I sat up. She’d straddled herself on me in her sudden jump. I was surprised how quickly she could move, but then, she wasn’t human. I’d still not quite got an answer out of her as to what exactly she was. 

“Sleeping in a bed. Not being afraid.” She let the swords drop back into their slots on her belt. Her eyebrows furrowed, trying to catch a thought, then she let it go. “Every touch, everything I do, it’s so tense. A cord waiting to snap. I don’t want to hurt anyone but I don’t know how to stop.” 

“Tell me.” I moved closer, until my head was resting on hers. “I want to know.” She looked up at me. That hollow stare seemed to spark, and a faint blush crossed her cheeks. 

“I… Fighting, forever. I don’t know how to stop.” 

“Where? With who?”

“Humans. Witches. Dogs, cats, pure fire, demons, angels.” She looked seriously at me, as if expecting me to challenge her.

“I believe you.” 

“You’ve got a crush, of course you’ll believe everything I say.” She smiled sadly, and I gave a tentative one myself. 

“But if the cat says you’re like nothing on this Earth, then I’m inclined to agree with him.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, you know.” Her hands wandered over her belt. They kept going to the hilts, where she’d placed the handles. Like a nervous tick. “Especially when it comes to a magic cat.” She looked ahead again, staring at nothing. 

“The last one was supposed to be the last,” she said. I tried to stroke her hair to snap her out of it. 

“The last one what?”

“The last world I was in, that was meant to be it. It was supposed to be the end. I would either help clear the way for millions of people to live, or die trying. I failed. Everyone that trusted me is dead. But I’m still here, aren’t I? At least, I feel like I am. I feel like, every time I go somewhere else, I lose another piece of myself. I’m not sure how much I exist anymore.” She held up a hand, and I grasped it quickly. It was small in mine. She seemed like a doll. 

“I see you, Shift the traveler. I know you exist.” I knocked my head against hers. “You’re here, with me.” 

“And yet, out of all of the places I end up, it’s here. A world from a book about the loss of sanity. I’m no liminal creature. I’m done trying to play the game of running between place to place. I don’t want to play anyone’s game anymore. I’m a thousand years in the past and the future and everywhere in between. Unable to do anything but run. Run, fight, and run some more. I don’t want to have to run from a world like this too.” 

“You don’t need to run. Wonderland, it’s not all like that.” I gripped her hand tighter. 

“You can’t seem to say anything that isn’t tinged with puppy love, can you.” Her words were callous, but it was the crack of a sob in them that made me flinch. 

“I’m… Sorry.” Gripping her hand tighter, I reached closer to pull her into my chest. “I’m sorry I can’t make you feel better. I can’t even begin to understand what’s wrong, or what happened to you. And sometimes it feels like you’re so strange that I feel like you’re not really here too. But you’re here, and you’re helping me, and you’re one of the reasons I’m on my way to see my sister right now, and not hiding away in a shed that used to be my home.” I buried my face against her hair. “And I don’t even care if your hair smells like blood or if you look like you’re trying to kill me half the time, or if you’re really a million years old. I just want you to stay here. And help me. And maybe we can find a place where you don’t have to be a cord strung so tight you could play a tune.”

“I’m… Not a million.” She muttered against my shoulder. “But it’s too confusing to count. I don’t like being confused. Wonderland is all about confusion, isn’t it?”

“I don’t care. Let me have my crush and just sit here for a bit, okay? I’ve got to go through everything in my life in so little time. I’m suddenly old, you know?” I smiled faintly. “Stay, at least until you stop shaking.” 

“… Fine.” She let her body fall against mine. “If a monster comes through the door, you fight it.”

“I’ll do whatever I can. With this…” I glanced down at the whip that hung on my belt. “Whatever this thing is. I’m not sure what I can actually accomplish with a whip.” I turned back to her, her body still faintly trembling against mine, and caressed over her shoulder as every breath seemed to shake her. 

“I tried to romance a kid…” She muttered. “The hell is wrong with me…”

“What?” I blinked. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m sorry, about last night.” She shook her head. “I didn’t… All of that, I didn’t mean to… I’m not myself. I don’t feel like I’ve been myself for a long time, but that was a low-”

“I’m not a child, you know.” I shrugged. “Like it or not, I have to grow up. I lost my life, but that doesn’t change who I am.” And I remembered who I was, before. I didn’t think like this, and I certainly didn’t feel like this. There was a heart beating this fast being near a girl, or even the thoughts of wanting to be near a girl. Suddenly there were thoughts in my head that couldn’t have been appropriate, and certainly weren’t for the moment. I carefully moved her away from my lap, making sure she didn’t notice what I was trying to hide. Thankfully, the pants were loose enough to hide anything if I chose to. I’d never had to hide that before. I couldn’t seem to look her in the eye. “I’m not normal. And neither are you.” 

“Don’t try to justify what I’ve done.” 

“You didn’t do anything.” I smiled, moving to the side. “We slept in the same bed. It was fine. I liked it.” Too much. 

“… I guess,” she finally sighed, and moved to grab her shoes. She paused in staring at the floor. “Rettah?”

“Yes?”

“… When we find your sister...” She bit her lip, turning away. “Never mind.” 

We left that day. The road was the same as before, winding slowly toward an inevitable incline, at the precipice of which would be the Capital. We could see it as time wore on, that sliver on the horizon turning into a sprawling acropolis that stretched outwards like skeletal fingers. It seemed as though the emaciated limb was absorbing the energy of the wasteland around it. Alongside the road joining us were the ruined buildings of other towns that had long since been ransacked. Not many humans continued to live down the main road. The closer one got to the Capital, the less we saw the hidden hideouts, the faces looking at us haunted from glass panes cloudy with time and dust buffeting it with every gust of wind. And for good reason; we were so often met with nobles on their way to and from the Capital that we spent more time hiding between these crumbling stone structures than we did walking. 

“We can’t continue like this,” Shift finally said in resignation, her head popping out from behind a half rotted wooden wall as she checked to make sure the slave caravan had left. “It’s wearing down time.” 

“But how else can we?” I asked. “I’m too well known. Everyone’s going to ask about you, as well.” 

“I know. But do you want it to take a month to get there?” She stared at the last of the caravan of slavers, with a handful of entertainment girls between them. One of the nobles, a brightly green haired King noble with piercing blue eyes, led the pack with a whistle. The girls had soulless eyes and meandered down the path with zombies. Some lacked even shoes, and one was nude. 

You’re supposed to be a slaver.” She gritted her teeth, turning away from the sight. “So, make me a slave.” 

My eyes bugged. “You?”

“I’m not happy about it, but if you use that rope-“

“No no, I can’t do that. That- that’s not proper.” I glanced back to the caravan that was almost out of sight. “I can’t do that to you.” 

“Proper doesn’t matter. What matters is if we’re going to make it to that city and find your sister. I’ll bite the bullet and deal with you tying me up if it means that we don’t have to wait for people to pass every single time we see them. It’s just holding us back.”

“You’re not wrong, but… do you have to look like that?” I tried to wrack my brain for memories of the proper attire for slaves. There didn’t seem to be any that I could remember, but she most certainly looked too well maintained. “And what about my eyes?”

“Keep the hat brim down, and you’ll be fine.” She nudged the edge of my hat, tugging it down over my eyes. I tugged it back up until I could at least see her. “I’ll roll in the dirt if I have to. There. Now it’s so close, you make me feel like I need to stab you again for good measure.” 

“That’s not funny,” I sighed. All of this was making my stomach turn. It was far too close to what I assumed had been Asentual’s usual. The last thing I wanted to do was copy him. “How do I tie you? I don’t know my knots.” 

“I’ll guide you through it.” She pulled the rope from my belt. “I’ll hide the swords with my shirt, and you make sure the knots aren’t too tight. This doesn’t have to be real, just look it.” She grabbed at the dust and dirt beside the broken building, rubbing it on her clothes. A small puddle of rain to side helped to cake it on. I winced at the sight when she was finished. It was in her hair, on her skin, and ruined that blouse. She looked almost as bad as the poor girls we’d seen moments before. “Alright, now the ropes.” 

I tried to listen to her on the basics of tying knots, but she was the one that did most of the work in the end. My hands kept shaking at the thought of entering the Capital. If someone saw my eyes, all it would bring is unwanted questions, and who knew what consequences. It meant I’d killed Asentual, in a manner of speaking. Surely that was murder. It felt like murder. 

“Alright,” She tugged me out of the hiding place by the manacles of rope tied loosely on her wrists. They looked tight to me, but she seemed happy with it. “Come on.” 

“I don’t like this,” I muttered. 

“I know you don’t. But it’ll work. Trust me.”

“Trust?” I did want to, I supposed. 

“Well, at least as far as the Capital. Then you can decide for yourself.” She smiled. I nodded faintly, and took the rope in my hands. But at the back of my mind, gnawing away at me, was the thought that this was a terrible idea. 

….

“Barracks this way!” A Lord noble called out from his stand, his hair a long shock of curls tied back to keep it out of his shouting face. “Sell and buy in bulk!” Another joined him the further we entered the outskirts of the Capital until it was a cacophony of calling out wares. The crowd itself moved like a river with the kind of chatter that filled up your ears until nothing else remained. The proprietors so busily at work had their hands full, but even still never seemed to stop advertising of their wares. Different sizes, statures, sexes, experience, creeds. 

I was in a sea of color from the nobility flocking about the slave stands, overwhelmed as I struggled to walk down the cobbled path that had changed from the dirt of the stream-like roads that fed into the city. On either side were wooden structures and prisons for the containment of slaves, with nobility in the front watching them like animals if they weren’t flitting about from place to place to judge differentiation on prices. There were hundreds of humans within the stocks, packed together, yet silent against the calls from their overseers. They huddled together like animals in the makeshift buildings with dirt floors, with nothing more than the clothes on their backs that hadn’t been washed in ages, turning to rags in the heavy summer sun. Women grouped with other women, and children held each other in large stands of somber faces. Men in their own cages stood apart from each other, but even then in the shackles they found ways to comfort each other, curling up where they could. The overfilling of the chambers forced most to stand. A few of them had fainted from the heat in their cells with the particularly hot day, and their overseers were struggling to separate the ones still standing from those that were being trampled from the overly full cages. The further I walked, the more the holding structures changed to coherent and sturdier creations, stone buildings that had been re-purposed for the containment of human wares, and brothels that doubled as inns for the purposes of the newcomers of the city that didn’t intend to stay long. Horses whinnied by the stands in front of the establishments with their bridles tied to the posts outside of them, but even they couldn’t seem to drown out the calls of entertainment girls being sold in bulk to go to the Kingdoms of the Lord and King, nor could they drown out the sounds of sex that seemed to happen wherever we went. Trying out the goods before buying seemed common.

It was unavoidable. Everywhere I looked, there were body parts I’d never seen before and hadn’t intended to. So, I kept my head down, numbly gripping the rope that connected me to Shift, and blushing like I never had before. The noises that the women made varied from screams of pleasure to cries of pain and desperate begging to stop, drowned out by something being forced into their gullets. Both made me flinch, trying to ignore the noises as much as I could. 

The last time I’d been through the Capital, I couldn’t have been older than five. It had been in a carriage with the Queen herself, and I was too busy focused on tarts to even consider what might be happening outside. Now though, it was unavoidable. Even keeping my gaze on the individual stones set into the ground, I still managed to nearly walk into two men coupling by the side of the road, and it was only a minute tug from Shift that saved me. 

“Head up, or you’re going to walk into someone,” she muttered as she pulled me back onto the road.

“I-I can’t,” I whispered, glancing at her to see her face faintly flushed. I was probably much worse. “This place is… I didn’t expect this.”

“You think I did?” She flushed. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s… I can’t even describe this. Why?” 

“Well… I did read about the laws the Queen put in place, or lack thereof.” It was difficult to recall that knowledge with examples of it surrounding me. 

“Go on. Focus on that.” The more I spoke, the calmer I felt. Shift listened expectantly, walking side by side with me on down the road as the building began to change from the slave holding facilities to more inns and general goods stores. 

“In order to create more lucrative trade, and to gain morale, the Queen repealed many decency laws. She wanted to focus on the hierarchy of Nobility, and she also… Well, on a whim, got rid of most laws. Her mental state has always been questionable, but it’s changed over time. The only thing she kept in place were the penalties for murder, and a few other things – but I always forget those on my tests.” I bit my lip at the sound of a sudden moan from my right, and quickly side stepped out of the way of a woman putting her mouth on another woman’s genitals. I caught only a flash of yellow, and the brown hair of the girl beneath her. Only got a glimpse of what they were doing out of the corner of my eye, but it made me go redder nonetheless. “It ended up with this…”

“This being, complete and utter chaos?”

“She doesn’t see it as chaos,” I argued. I tried to remember the quotes from my textbooks. My tutors had always considered me a good student, but now it seemed so far away. Like a dream. “She sees it as a chance for people get out their frustrations, and create a more coherent and more easily subjugated society.” 

“And yet, it come across as a broken world.”

“Is it?”

“I’ve seen broken worlds. They all give off the same stench. It makes my skin itch. I suppose the slavery is supposed to help with morale as well, right?” She watched as a small group of slave boys walked past us. None were on ropes, but they followed their female Queen noble overseer nonetheless. She held a whip, and wasn’t afraid to use it on the ones that dawdled. Their clothes were better than the rags we had seen in the barracks, but not by much. 

“Yes…” I couldn’t hold the gaze of those boys for long before turning away. “It’s supposed to keep everyone happy,” I muttered. 

“Everyone but the slaves happy, I guess. They’re not important.”

“I don’t exactly agree to any of this, you know. When I was taught this, I was too young to question any of it. I didn’t even see this place. I didn’t realize how bad it was.” I shivered. “I never left the palace. I stayed so far in my own world that I didn’t… I didn’t realize how bad it was.” 

“Don’t misunderstand, I’m not blaming you.” She butted my arm gently with her shoulder. “I’ve just… I’ve never seen something quite like this. It’s… More than a little upsetting.” She gritted her teeth at the sound of a whip echoing from behind us. “I don’t like it. I want to do something.”

“I know how you feel…” I glanced back at her, trying to ignore the sex behind her. “But we’re just two people. We can’t.” 

“I know.” She smiled faintly. “There’s no point.” Finally, we seemed to be out of the rough edges of the sprawling city, and the bustle of commerce began to calm my nerves. Less slaves dotted the streets as the focus grew to be on trade and food, rather than slaves and sex. It still wasn’t that uncommon to see someone engaging in something out of the corner of my eye, but I could walk with my head up now and not get an eyeful every few yards. 

“Do you know where your sister might be?” She asked. 

“I…” I sighed. “No, not really.” 

“Maybe we should ask around?”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea either.” I bit my lip and gave a tentative glance around us. “I don’t want anyone to take a closer look at me than they have to. And you’re a human, if you talked to them, well…”

“What, would I be raped?” I flinched. 

“Punishment does sometimes entail that, yes.” 

“Ah.” She drew her head down. “Guess I’ll shut up, then.”

“I can protect you, if anyone tries anything.” 

“I’m less worried about myself, and more worried about holding back from killing someone if they try to touch me.” She motioned to the handles she kept hidden under her mottled shirt. “I’m not defenseless.”

“Ah… Please don’t do that. A low profile, remember?”

She nodded, then look away at the sudden rush of movement on the other side of the road. I stared at the stream of Guards running back towards where we’d come from, calling orders I couldn’t pick up with the heavy plated armor clanging from their chests and shoulders. I even caught the mark of a Card in the midst, leading the sprinting march with orders ringing. “What’s that? Something in your textbooks?”

“No, I’ve – I’ve never seen anything like that. It looks like there’s trouble but that – that doesn’t happen here. The Capital is supposed to be a place of peace.” My eyebrows furrowed. 

“Sounds like something we should be checking out.” She gestured back with her head. “Shouldn’t we?” 

“Follow the guards?” I blinked. “But the low profile.” 

“We don’t engage. But there’s something off here, and there would be no harm in seeing what’s happening, would there?” She pulled me back by the ropes on her wrist. “You’re playing the Hatter, and I’m playing a slave. As long as we stay out of the way of whatever action transpires, we stay within our roles.” 

“I-I suppose,” I let her pull me back, stumbling through the streets. No one followed us; every noble in our vicinity seemed to be running the opposite direction. It was difficult to navigate through the sudden rush of bodies that flung themselves as far away from the commotion as they could. Even the sex acts seemed to be broken up through whatever was happening, with previous participants nowhere to be found as we retraced our steps.

“It sounds like fighting,” Shift called back to me as she led the charge towards the perceived violence. My hackles raised at the thought. 

“Someone could be getting hurt.”

“No shit.” her face hardened as we returned to the slave barracks, but this time the sight was completely different. 

The wooden palisade walls had been torn asunder by massive hempen ropes, now dangling in the streets long forgotten. Swathes of humans poured out of the holes with fearful cries piercing the noise that had only grown louder since the last we had left it. They clung to each other and searched blindly for relatives, calling out for mercy and useless in between the battle that had struck out in the streets. A male slave took up a sword from a fallen guard, and was cut down seconds later. It didn’t stop others from doing the same. Between them was the clanging of metal, and the screams of anguish as guards were cut down, one by one. 

Hooded figures lined streets, slitting the throats of every noble in the broad daylight of the city. Armor-less, even for every five that fell, they took down a guard with them. It was so obvious the Card was overwhelmed, calling out order after heedless order and waving his sword wildly with fear in his green eyes. They weren’t prepared. They didn’t know how to defend this. There were too many of them, such an avalanche of figures that it was almost impossible to move in the sea of them. Shift and I stayed to the side with my breath caught in my throat well out of the way of the violence, but the sea was only moments away from washing towards us. The guards wouldn’t be able to hold back the flood for long, they were merely sacrifices for the ocean of slaves and rebellion. 

I’d never seen violence before. I’d never seen blood like this, running and collecting in puddles with its sources falling moment after moment, grouped into piles of bodies disemboweled by a knife or sword. Beneath those hoods were the faces of men and women, human and noble, with no defining characteristic between them. Men and women, it didn’t matter. They fought, and died, without heed. The slicing of bodies, the smell of blood and organs and bile… I barely held back my roiling stomach. I couldn’t help but stare at it all, shaking in fear. I let go of the rope, numb to everything else. 

Something was building inside me. Something wanted. Needed. Something wanted to reclaim themselves. Something was fighting against me, the same way I fought against my stomach. Something was desperately telling me to let go, and let them handle the blood and death. They could do it, they were born for this. It burned and begged, and yet was so cool at the same time, washing over my like a pool of water. If only I let go… I was growing tired…

“All of you who were once slaves!” The familiar voice woke me. Between the violence, the sea of fighting, a cloaked figure unearthed their features from their hood. Her long tendrils of deep red hair fell, her face standing above all the others with a face that commanded attention and respect. The vibrant green eyes of a bird of prey, flicking between the violence but focusing only on the slaves she’d freed. “To me! All who were once fettered and forced to fuck and work for whom you were told were your betters, you do not belong here! You do not belong enslaved, and the Queen is not yours! I give your freedom if only you follow me!” Her voice boomed out among the crowd, somehow heard even with the screams and clashes of metal on armor. She was older, much older. Wiser. Sadder.

“Margret…” I uttered under my breath.


End file.
